Dance

862. ‘You See the Trouble With Me’, by Black Legend

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Our slow meander around the year 2000’s many, many chart-toppers continues, and we find another interesting stop along the road: the lost Barry White number one.

You See the Trouble With Me, by Black Legend (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 18th – 25th June 2000

First, we do have to state that it is not Barry White’s voice on this record, though vocalist Elroy ‘Spoonface’ Powell does a mighty fine impersonation. He even manages to make this sound like a live sample, introducing it with a spoken In 1975, we brought you an album, With a song… backed with lots of crowd noise.

Is it too early to suggest a mini disco revival, after Geri, Madison Avenue, and now this? (I’m also sneaking a peek at the record which replaced Black Legend at the top.) Though what dominates this record is not so much disco strings, but a naggingly insistent, thoroughly modern, house beat. On the radio edit the producers toy with us for the opening two minutes, teasing snatches of ‘You See the Trouble With Me’ (a #2 hit in 1976) that cut in and out, before finally letting ‘Barry White’ loose. For a bit. When the house beat kicks back in for the third or fourth time, it officially becomes annoying.

Barry White had refused the use of his original vocals for this remix, as he felt it ‘was cheap and had no soul’. I can understand his point, as the song uses the sample as bait, almost, to lure you to the dancefloor. The choppy nature of this song, the insistence on falling back on that irritating beat, means that there’s no release, no climax. You’re left with blue (disco) balls…

Black Legend were a very short-lived Italian production duo, with the aforementioned Powell on singing duties. They were together for three singles, and their only other appearance on the UK singles chart is with the #37 peaking ‘Somebody’. They fall agonisingly short of verified one-hit wonder status.

While I don’t much care for this remix, I am being won over by the year 2000’s fast turnover, which allowed curios like this to make number one, records that may not have made the top at any other period in chart history. Speaking of which, Black Legend are the first chart-toppers in a run of twelve one-weekers, from mid-June to mid-September 2000: a record-breaking stretch. Let the frantic fun begin!

861. ‘It Feels So Good’, by Sonique

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In a year packed with dance hits, here’s one of the best…

It Feels So Good, by Sonique (her 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 28th May – 18th June 2000

The strings; the husky, ominous vocals; the garage beat. It’s of its time, but also one of those hits that transcends its moment. Maybe it’s a sign of how pop music has lost its forward movement in the early years of this century, but ‘It Feels So Good’ sounds like it could be a hit from 2025. Plus, lines like You give me such a vibe, It’s totally bona fide… feel very much like how the young folk speak these days.

In my mind, I always imagined the chorus was autotuned, especially the It’s you I’m always thinking of… line. But listening now, I don’t think it is. It’s just very distinctively sung, in a very high key, oddly far back in Sonique’s throat. Hey, every hit needs a hook, even one that makes it sound like you’ve got a bad cold.

As with many dance tracks, my attention starts to wander in the second verse, which is more of the same. But I do like the lasering synths that become more prominent as the song progresses. Having said that it sounds very much of the year 2000, it turns out that ‘It Feels So Good’ was almost two years old by the time it made #1, having reached #24 on its original release in December 1998. Interestingly, given that the US is usually quite resistant to European EDM, it was the song’s success stateside (where it eventually made #8) that prompted the re-release.

Sonia Marina Clarke, AKA Sonique, had been active in the music biz since the early eighties, when she had formed a reggae band, and had released her debut solo single in 1985. She had also worked with S’Express, though joined after ‘Theme from S’Express’ had topped the charts. She had two other Top 10s – ‘Sky’ and ‘I Put a Spell on You’ – which tread much the same territory as this single without being as good. She still records, and DJs, and played Glastonbury just last year.

‘It Feels So Good’ is also noteworthy due to being the joint longest-running number one of 2000, with a grand total of three weeks at the top. I feel I should also note how darn basic the title is. ‘It Feels So Good’ rivals ‘I Love You’ (#1 for Cliff and the Shadows in 1961, chart fans) for simplicity. Just drop the ‘It’, I think, and things become much cooler. But what do I know? It’s not as if proper sentence structure hampered this record’s success…

859. ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’, by Madison Avenue

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Though it may have been a chaotic year of one-week wonders, of number ones with the lifespan of butterflies, there’s something joyous about the chart-toppers of the year 2000.

Don’t Call Me Baby, by Madison Avenue (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 14th – 21st May 2000

This is the fifteenth number one of the year (we’re only in May, and there have been years in which the entire twelve months saw fewer than fifteen #1s). Of that fifteen, I’d count eleven as being in some way upbeat, uptempo, uplifting… It’s as if the record buying public had bounded into the new millennium full of optimism, ready to fill their CD players with fun records. Such as this slice of disco-funk.

Other than the chorus, the one thing that stands out about ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’ is the catchy bass riff that propels the song along. And it’s surprising how much of the record is left ‘blank’, with just that bass riff and the disco beat to fill the spaces between the verses and chorus. I suspected that it might have been a sample, so timeless does it sound, and so it is: from a 1980 Italian hit called ‘Ma Quale Idea’, by Pino D’Angiò, which in turn had been based on disco classic ‘Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now’, by McFadden & Whitehead.

The lyrics tell a story of female empowerment via the dancefloor: Behind my smile is my IQ, I must admit this does not sit with the likes of you… You’re really sweet, You’re really nice, But didn’t mama ever tell you not to play with fire…? I like the modern sass and the bite of the lyrics against the retro beat. Don’t underestimate me boy, I’ll make you sorry you were born… In fact, this brings us to another emerging theme of the year: Girl Power actually kicking in, half a decade late. I’ve already mentioned that the 21st century would see female pop stars dominate, but I hadn’t quite noticed how spunky many of the songs would be. This, straight after ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’, and ‘Bag It Up’, for example. (We’ll ignore ‘Born to Make You Happy’…)

Madison Avenue were an Australian duo, producer Andy Van Dorsselaer and singer Cheyne Coates. This record’s success made them the first Australian group to top the British charts since Men at Work back in 1983. ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’ had actually made #30 the year before, but hung around in clubs and the lower reaches of the charts, prompting this successful re-release.

They may not quite qualify as one-hit wonders, having one further Top 10 (the similarly fun ‘Who the Hell Are You’), and one more Top 40, hit. But I’d say Madison Avenue definitely qualify as the latest member of our rapidly growing ‘random dance’ sub-folder, with more to come very soon.

856. ‘Toca’s Miracle’, by Fragma

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In my last post, I argued for garage as the sound of the new millennium. And it’s a compelling argument. But it wilts in the face of competition from the true, the one, the only sound of the year 2000… Random dance.

Toca’s Miracle, by Fragma (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 16th – 30th April 2000

Why is it so hard for dance acts to have longevity? Is it because their tracks are often based on samples, and have often been through multiple remixes, before they eventually make it big, making it hard to recapture whatever made it a hit in the first place when recording the follow-up? Or is it because it’s difficult for some faceless bloke behind a mixing desk to build up much of a fanbase?

Another question: who, or what, is a Toca? While my queries about dance music might need a more expert opinion, I can answer this second one. In Spanish, ‘Tocar’ means to touch. (It can also mean ‘a hole dug by a mouse’ in Portuguese, but I’m assuming that wasn’t the inspiration for this hit.) A British DJ by the name of DJ Vimto (juicy!) mashed 1998 hit ‘Toca Me’ (#11 in the UK) by German trance trio Fragma, with British singer Coco Star’s 1997 #39 hit ‘I Need a Miracle’. The illegally recorded results were picked up by DJs, and played in clubs to an enthusiastic reception. Luckily for Mr Vimto, Fragma and Coco Star liked what they heard, and were on board for a more legitimate recording.

I can pinpoint the exact moment that made ‘Toca’s Miracle’ such a big hit. The line in the chorus – It’s more than physical what I need to feel from you… They’re the usual semi-nonsense dance lyrics, but something in Star’s floaty melisma grabs the ear. It’s a hook that’s remained with us for the past twenty-five years, instantly identifiable even if I have very little love for the actual song. The rest of the record is fairly predictable, though admittedly I’m no connoisseur of ambient trance. It is a very well regarded track, however, and is seen as a game changer for Eurodance, setting the tone for the rest of the 2000s, through acts like Cascada, and Ultrabeat, and Basshunter.

The other thing I remember about this is the video, in which Coco Star plays in a game of women’s futsal. The scenes set in the changing rooms were very popular with the boys at school, though looking back it’s all quite PG, proof more of the untamed horniness of fourteen-year-old boys than of the video’s raunchiness. Interestingly, the only video now available on YouTube is of a 2008 remix, which might have something to do with Coco Star taking Fragma to court claiming that she had never received any royalties. The track was removed from streaming services too, until 2022 when the court case was thrown out.

Fragma managed a couple more Top 10 hits before disappearing from the charts. Coco Star has managed no hits other than this, and the song it samples. My question about dance acts not having longevity remains hanging… Perhaps the most interesting thing about this entire saga however is the fact that Coco’s ‘I Need a Miracle’ was written by Rob Davis, lead guitarist of glam rock legends Mud. Not a chart-topping connection many would have predicted, right? Amazingly, Davis will be go on to be involved in two further ginormous chart-toppers during the early years of the 21st century…

As mentioned, the video is not on YouTube due to copyright reasons. Even the video below may not be the actual chart-topping 2000 mix.

This is the original video, with a 2008 remix playing over it… (can only be watched on YouTube).

851. ‘Don’t Give Up’, by Chicane ft. Bryan Adams

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Hurray! Our first random dance hit of the new century! From the mid-nineties onwards these have become a common occurrence, and they aren’t letting up in the early years of the 2000s.

Don’t Give Up, by Chicane (his 1st and only #1) ft. Bryan Adams (his 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 12th – 19th March 2000

This is blissed-out, late-afternoon by the pool sort of dance. Background dance, if there is such a thing. Which begs the question, how did this middling record end up on top of the charts? What’s the USP? Is it the fact that it’s rock music’s Bryan Adams croaking his way through it?

Maybe it was a bigger deal than it seems now, a middle-aged rock star appearing on a fresh dance track. Nowadays nobody bats an eyelid at a rock-cum-dance remix. I initially wondered if it was a sample of an old Adams’ track, but no – it was written by Adams in 1999, then mixed and produced by Chicane (British DJ Nicholas Bracegirdle). Vocally, Adams does a Cher and is heavily vocoded and autotuned. And yet, you can instantly tell it’s him. I never would have pegged him as having such a distinctive voice.

Other than the novelty of Bryan Adams’ featuring on it, there’s not much here to catch the ears. It picks up a bit from the midway point, with some higher tempo trance touches, but it remains fairly repetitive. I can’t escape the feeling that this sounds like the sort of remix that would usually have been tucked away as the third track on a CD single.

Perhaps the success of this record was due to the fact that Chicane had been responsible for the single edit of Adams’ 1999 #6 single ‘Cloud Number Nine’ (a much better song than this). View ‘Don’t Give Up’ as the follow-up and its success starts to make more sense. Chicane didn’t have too many big hits, but when they did it was usually with someone interesting. His single before this featured Máire Brennan, sister of Enya, while his 2006 hit ‘Stoned in Love’ was with Tom Jones.

Bryan Adams meanwhile was no stranger to chart success. This was his 11th Top 10 hit since arriving on these shores in the mid-eighties. It is interesting to see the difference in his two chart-toppers though, both in terms of their sound, and in their presence at the top. ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It For You’ holds the record for consecutive weeks at number one; while a decade later ‘Don’t Give Up’ squeaked a solitary week on fairly low sales, just over a thousand copies ahead of Madonna in the end.

842. ‘King of My Castle’, by Wamdue Project

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Suddenly we’re at the pre-penultimate number one of the 1990s. The third last chart-topper of the decade, and the last good one…

King of My Castle, by Wamdue Project (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 21st – 28th November 1999

There’s something deeply cool about this record, something that I recognised aged thirteen but that put me off it. It sounded scary, somehow, a song that people much older than me danced to, in dark, misty nightclubs, grinding against one another as the bass pulsed through them…

Now that I’m a grown man, and have been to plenty of nightclubs, in time getting over my fear of grinding up against strangers, I can appreciate this alluring one-hit-wonder. The throbbing, disco beat. The purred uh-humms. The very of-its-time Balearic riff, but one that sounds as if it’s being played from speakers dropped in the deep end of a swimming pool. The kitschy little flute motif.

I’d say, though, that the biggest selling point of this record are the lyrics. The fact a woman sings Must be the reason why I’m king of my castle… The fact I always thought she was free in her ‘trestle’ (it’s ‘trapped soul’)… The wonderful insouciance of the line: Must be a reason why I’m making examples of you…It’s to do with Freud’s theory of the unconscious – as all the best dance hits are – while the video featured scenes from anime ‘Ghost in the Shell’, in which cyborgs are controlled by a hacker. That video featured too many hand drawn boobs for daytime screening, so a more generic second was made.

Wamdue Project were the brainchild of producer Chris Brann, with vocals from deep-house singer Gaelle Adisson. ‘King of My Castle’ had originally been released and recorded in an eight-minute downtempo version in 1997. This remix was helmed by Italian DJ producer Roy Malone, and it became a hit all around Europe. One-off dance tracks feel like a summer phenomenon, therefore it feels a little odd for a dance track to take off so well in late-November. But if ever there was is such a thing as a moody, winter dance smash then this is it.

I’m at the natural end of this post, but would like to linger a little longer in Wamdue World, knowing the horrors that are about to come. (The 20th century does not end on a high note, musically speaking.) This is the sort of dance music I can really get behind, one with a genuinely weird edge, one that I can see working as a grungy rock song. One with easily misheard lyrics based on Freud, and his ego. Wamdue Project are not quite one-hit wonders – I lied earlier – as follow up ‘You’re the Reason’ scraped to #39 the following April, but they remained such a mystery that Chris Brann was nominated for Best British Newcomer at the 2000 Brit Awards, before being hastily withdrawn when the judges discovered he was American.

The ‘Ghost in the Shell’ video:

The ‘official’ video:

836. ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’, by Eiffel 65

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And so we come to this story, about a little guy who lives in a blue world…

Blue (Da Ba Dee), by Eiffel 65 (their 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 19th September – 10th October 1999

Blue his house, With the blue little windows, And a blue Corvette, Everything is blue for him… I warned you that we weren’t quiet done with the novelty dance hits, but it feels unfair to lump this in with the Vengaboys’ banal beats. ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’ has a strange depth to it, a deep melancholy in the piano line, and a compelling bizarreness to the verses’ revving bass and deliberately off-key vocals.

For a start, it’s clearly about someone in the middle of a depressive episode, wandering through a world where everything is blue, inside and out, cause he ain’t got nobody to listen… This guy needs help! ‘Dancing through the tears’ is a well-established dance music trope, but very few records can have mixed dance and depression like this. And really, can you actually dance to this song? The bpms are fairly low, and it doesn’t really have peaks and troughs, the moments of euphoria that dance records need. Just a steady trudge through a blue world.

I can see why this record annoys people (‘Rolling Stone’ have it as the 14th most annoying song ever), and yet I think that’s a knee-jerk reaction. Yes, it’s repetitive and sing-songy. Yes the chorus is just lots and lots of da ba dees. Yes, the video is spectacularly bad (I’m not sure what’s more dated, the CGI or the band’s frosted tips). But so what? Get beyond that, and listen to the moment in the verses where the autotune twists the lyrics to make it sound like the singer’s voice is breaking, and wonder if there might not be some depth to this record.

Plus, if nothing else, it has left the world with that piano hook, which has been sampled, remixed and interpolated many times in the past twenty-five years. A re-write by David Guetta and Bebe Rexha, which tapped into the 2020’s nostalgia for all things ‘90s, made number one a couple of years back, while there’s not a Best of the Nineties compilation worth its salt without this tune on it, like it or not.

Eiffel 65 are an Italian duo (formerly a trio when this made #1), and this their first big hit. They managed a #3 follow-up, ‘Move Your Body’, which was more of the same without being anywhere near as memorable. They then vanished from most charts, though they were scoring Italian hits well into the 2000s. They are still active, and were recently seen trying to represent San Marino at the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest. Meanwhile the funny blue alien from the video, Zorotlekuykauo Sushik IV, AKA ‘Zorotl’ has also released music under his own steam (with a song written by the members of Eiffel 65). The more you know…

835. ‘We’re Going to Ibiza!’, by Vengaboys

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Bookending the summer of 1999, Vengaboys return with their second number one.

We’re Going to Ibiza!, by Vengaboys (their 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 12th – 19th September 1999

But in Vengaworld, summer isn’t over yet. We’re off to Ibiza. Or should I say ‘Ay-bizza’ – rhymes with ‘pizza’ – which I assume how the island is pronounced in Dutch. It is a re-write of Typically Tropical’s 1975 chart-topper, ‘Barbados’, complete with captain’s in-flight announcements, plus bonus nonsensical chanting.

The original was plenty catchy and so, yes, this is still an earworm. The Vengaboys’ producers knew what they were doing, creating records that stay with you no matter how much you’d wish they wouldn’t. And it’s a little more chilled than ‘Boom x4’, with it’s semi-calypso beats. But it’s still damn annoying, and the tacky synth line is jarring.

And while Typically Tropical’s original came in an age when air travel was still a luxury – and when the journey to Barbados described in the song would have been a fantasy for most – the Vengaboys’ version conjures up visions of a cheap EasyJet flight full of rowdy Glaswegians. It’s an interesting example of how even the most throwaway pop records can tell us something about society beyond the charts.

Most of you will probably be glad to learn that this is the last we’ll hear of the Vengaboys (though it’s far from the last novelty dance record of the year). They were amazingly popular despite the quality of most of their records, with their two chart-toppers coming in the middle of a run of seven straight Top 10 hits. I once went on a desert safari in Qatar, driving up and down sand dunes in a jeep at breakneck speed, during which our driver played Vengaboys Greatest Hits on a loop. You can’t properly appreciate the cold majesty of the desert unless it’s accompanied by an extended mix of ‘We Like to Party!’

Recently, as we’ve slowly stumbled towards the fag-end of the ‘90s, I’ve been wondering why pop music took such a turn towards the disposable, and the bubblegum, at the turn of the century. There are lots of sensible reasons, like the CD single being at the peak of its popularity, with discounts, and clever marketing all targeting teens and tweens; but I have an inkling that the impending unknown that was Y2K also brought out people’s hedonistic side, that they were literally partying like it was 1999. Why feel any shame about buying ‘We’re Going to Ibiza’ when the world might end in four months’ time…? I was there, though just a little too young to properly remember the prevailing public mood, and whether or not a fin de siècle over-indulgence is to blame for the popularity of the Vengaboys. But it might have been.

829. ‘9PM (Till I Come)’, by ATB

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After plenty of boyband balladry and teeth-clenchingly sweet bubblegum, what else is on our 1999 checklist…? Of course: a one-off dance hit!

9PM (Till I Come), by ATB (his 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 27th June – 11th July 1999

I believe the airy trance riff that holds this hit together is classed as Balearic, after the island chain in the Mediterranean, where tunes like this blast from beach bars and clubs all summer long. I have never been to Ibiza, but as I listen to this next chart-topper I can’t help but picture a beach bathed in late-afternoon sun, a cocktail glass glistening, a sunburnt Brit vomiting Stella onto a street corner…

It’s an evocative track. While I must remind readers yet again that I am no dance music afficionado, I can’t deny that this is ear-catching, and atmospheric. And sophisticated too, compared to the Vengaboys (though a Whoopee Cushion would sound sophisticated next to the Vengaboys…) The main riff was created on a guitar, and has an almost flamenco tinge to it. While I’m convinced that elsewhere in the mix there’s a banjo, which must be a first for a dance #1.

Of course the somewhat risqué title and lyrics also played a part in this becoming such a huge smash. Till I come… a breathy voice coos over and over… Change it and see… Change what and see, we’re left wondering? As examples of titillation in number one singles go, it’s pretty subtle. Which I like. As we move into the 21st century, we’ll meet plenty of chart-toppers so brazen that they make this one sound relatively prudish.

ATB is the stage name of German DJ and producer André Tanneberger, for whom ‘9PM’ was a first smash hit, the first of three-in-a-row in the UK. (Which, okay, ruins what I said in the intro about this being a ‘one-off’, but you know what I mean.) It was the year’s 5th highest-selling hit, and the 44th highest of the entire decade! The riff proved so memorable that ATB recycled part of it for the #3 follow-up ‘Don’t Stop’, while it also returned him to the Top 10 in 2021 when a remake, ‘Your Love (9PM)’, was released. He was voted the world’s #1 DJ in 2011.

Detached appreciation is the best I can muster for this sort of dance hit, though it is a nice change of pace. I will say that this song was so ubiquitous at the time that, listening to it now, ‘9PM (Till I Come)’ feels so of the ‘late-nineties’ that it’s the sort of track you’d use in a film or TV show as a setting shorthand, making sure an audience knows exactly what time period they’re in.

828. ‘Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!’, by Vengaboys

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Back in 1995, the Outhere Brothers took a track called ‘Boom Boom Boom’ to number one. Surely, we thought, that was the limit for chart-topping songs featuring ‘Boom’ in the title? How wrong we were… Four years on, the Vengaboys did what nobody imagined possible: they added the fourth ‘Boom’…

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!, by Vengaboys (their 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 20th – 27th June 1999

If you thought our previous number one, ‘Bring It All Again’ by S Club 7, was cheap and cheesy then you might as well stop reading now. Everything here, from the title, to the lyrics, to the mid-tempo beat, is banal. There are no hidden layers, no sense of irony, no subtlety. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

And yet here I am. Enjoying it. How depressingly predictable. One of history’s most moronic number one singles, and I’m having a good time. What a sad excuse for a music blogger. I will not attempt to justify it. I will not use nostalgia as an excuse. I am ashamed.

Actually no, wait. I will make a couple of attempts at justification. I’ve just discovered the first verse of ‘Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!’ interpolates ABBA’s seminal late-disco classic, ‘Lay All Your Love on Me’ (strain your ears and you can just about hear it). ABBA! That certainly clears off a layer of muck. Plus, it could be argued that this is actually a gritty, confrontational number one single, written from the point of view of a sex worker – If you’re alone, And you need a friend… I’ll be your lover tonight… – about which social studies theses could be written. (And if you’re not convinced with this hooker theory, just watch the video…)

Like all Eurotrash acts, Vengaboys simply had to be from either Germany or the Netherlands. Place your bets… Yes, they were Dutch. Still are, I should say, as they are going strong on the nostalgia circuit. Like most of these acts, the sexy young stars on the CD sleeves and in the videos were not the brains behind the songs, Vengaboys having been put together by two of the most Dutch sounding men in existence: Wessel van Diepen and Dennis van den Driesschen.

Before I finish, let me indulge in a spot of reminiscing. ‘Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!’ is forever imprinted on my conscience thanks to a school friend. (We’ll call him Richard, because that was his name.) He claimed that he had lost his virginity to a girl who had seduced him by singing a version of this song with his name in the chorus. It happened, he promised, at a summer camp for arthritic teenagers. The girl’s surname was, he swore blind, Paradise. There are very few occasions in my life in which I have laughed more than the day he tried to sell us this story.