Novelty Hits

834. ‘Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of…)’, by Lou Bega

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Ladies and gentlemen…

Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of…), by Lou Bega (his 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 29th August – 12th September 1999

…this is Mambo Number Five. Autumn may have begun while this record was at number one, but the Latin summer of 1999 is still going strong. As with both our previous Latin chart-toppers – ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’ and ‘Mi Chico Latino’ – yes, this is cheesy, and yes, this is Latin music with all the raw edges softened. But I challenge anyone to listen to this and not smile, just a bit. And even today, you throw this on at any kids party, or wedding, hell even at a funeral, and the dancefloor will light up.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a mambo at number one. Forty-four years, to be exact, when Rosemary Clooney scored her second chart-topper with ‘Mambo Italiano’ (which was mambo in name more than anything else), and Pérez Prado had an instrumental smash with ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’. It was Prado himself, the King of Mambo, who originally recorded ‘Mambo No. 5’ in 1949. He had also been back in the charts in 1995, despite dying in 1989, when ‘Guaglione’ made #2 thanks to a feature on a Guinness advert.

Lou Bega, a German-born Italian-Ugandan rapper, had the idea to sample ‘Mambo No. 5’ and turn it into a modern pop-rap song while living in Miami, where he had been turned on to Latin music. The brass band, and the shouts, are that of Prado; but Bega added lots of ad-libs, and some wonderfully dated record scratches and tapes-getting-all-tangled-in-the-deck sound effects (kids these days will never know the pain…)

And of course, he also added the words. Seven ladies that went down in history. Monica, Erica, Rita, Tina, Sandra, Mary, and Jessica. There is a particular joy in knowing someone by any of these names, and of trying to crowbar their accompanying line into conversation. I used to work with a Rita (all I need), while I also know a Mary (all night long), but my personal goal is to meet a Sandra (in the sun).

What’s interesting is not just how big this genre of music suddenly became in the summer of 1999, but how much songs like this and ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’ remain in the public consciousness, far more than the Westlife’s many ballads and anonymous dance tunes. Lou Bega managed one more minor hit in the UK with the follow-up to this, ‘I Got a Girl’, in which he yet again lists his many girlfriends. He remains active, still dressing like Pablo Escobar on his summer holidays, still peddling his schtick (his most recent release on Spotify samples ‘Macarena’).

Still, he’ll always have ‘Mambo No. 5’. Stick a random pin on a map and chances are you’ll hit a country where this record made #1. In France it was there for a mind-blowing twenty weeks… The success wasn’t all positive though, as Bega and his producers spent seven years locked in a legal battle with Pérez Prado’s estate, before a judge ruled that the writing credits be split evenly. Meanwhile my favourite story connected with ‘Mambo No. 5’ is that it was originally chosen as the theme song for the US Democrats’ 2000 convention, before someone pointed out that having Bill Clinton walk out to A little bit of Monica in my life wasn’t such a hot idea…

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.

826. ‘Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)’, by Baz Luhrmann

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Ummmm…. 1999 might not be a top-tier year from a musical standpoint, but it’s certainly turning into one of my favourite years to write about…

Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen), by Baz Luhrmann (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 6th – 13th June 1999

We’ve pinged from pop-punk, to new wave, to bubblegum, to garage, with plenty of boyband pap in between, to this… This monologue on life from an Australian film director. It is a word-for-word recital of an imagined graduation speech, written by columnist Mary Schmich for the Chicago Tribune in 1997, that had gained fame through that most late-nineties of ways: as a viral email.

The voice on the record is Australian voice actor Lee Perry, who dispenses Schmich’s pearls of wisdom with a likeably dry authority. Some are practical (Floss! Stretch!), while some are fanciful (Maybe you’ll divorce at forty, Maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken at your 75th wedding anniversary…). Some are funny (Read the directions, Even if you don’t follow them…), and some are touching (Get to know your parents, You never know when they’ll be gone for good…) All of it is bookended by the one and only piece of advice that has been proven by scientists: Wear sunscreen!

The backing track is the choral version of a dance hit from 1991, which also lends the record its title, Rozalla’s ‘Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)’, a song Luhrmann had previously used in ‘Romeo + Juliet’. It’s got a nice laid-back, trip-hop, surf-rock feel to it. In extended mixes, a new version of the chorus from the Rozalla original is included, although the single mix skips any singing and makes this a purely spoken-word #1, to rank alongside Telly Savalas and J.J. Barrie.

Although I have an aversion anything labelled as ‘self-help’, there is something appealing about this weird, post-modern single. It’s the sort of thing Andy Warhol might have released, had he had a pop music career. Like a lot of Lurhmann’s work, it’s not half as deep as it thinks it is. Some of the lyrics are downright trite, live laugh love level bullshit (Do one thing every day that scares you…), but there are a couple of verses that verge on the profound. My favourites are the lines on the power of youth in the first verse, and on nostalgia towards the end: Advice is a form of nostalgia, Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, And recycling it for more than it’s worth…

I think it also appeals because it’s now twenty-five years old, and is itself a reminder of a simpler time. A time when emails went viral, when newspapers would bother publishing a piece of whimsy like this, and when a pop record this innovative could make the top of the charts. Plus, spend five minutes scrolling through Instagram today, and you’ll be bombarded with an avalanche of crappy, pop-psychology memes with captions ten times more glib and cheesy than this record. (Oops, there’s me falling into nostalgia’s sneaky trap already…)

Baz Luhrmann may have had a far more prolific career as a director, but this isn’t the only time that he has had a say in the world of music. Tracks from the soundtracks of his movies, from ‘Romeo + Juliet’, to ‘Moulin Rouge’, to ‘Elvis’, have all made the upper reaches of the singles charts, including a soon to come number one.

As with some of our more left-field recent chart-toppers (Mr. Oizo and Spacedust spring immediately to mind) I’m more in the ‘Whyyyyy?’ than the ‘Yayyyyy!’ camp with this record, but it makes for a fun curio. And as a fair-skinned person living in a hot climate, I can attest: Trust him on the sunscreen!

The single mix:

The extended version, with a sung chorus:

809. ‘Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)’, by Chef

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Falling short behind the Spice Girls in Christmas-week, but thrusting to number one for the new year… A funky ode to some sweet, yet salty, confectionary.

Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You), by Chef (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 27th December 1998 – 3rd January 1999

Part-recipe, part funk-soul masterpiece… Could we argue that ‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ is the first and perhaps only true funk song to make number one in the UK? Naturally everyone came for the innuendo, but they stayed for the fact this is actually a great song, with a nasty funk riff. Plus, the voice is Isaac Hayes – soul, funk, Stax Records legend – becoming one of the oldest chart-topping artists, aged fifty-five.

In all honesty, these balls do be sounding delicious. Cinnamon, butter, brandy, vanilla, and chocolate (though, interestingly, no salt)… Grease up the cooking sheet, (Cause I hate when my balls stick)… Then pre-heat the oven to 350, And give that spoon a lick…! It all leads to a frenzied ending, in which Chef’s balls start to burn, and a piano takes a pounding like nothing we’ve heard since Jerry Lee Lewis was at number one.

If you’re going to do a novelty song – if you really must – then use records like this as your ‘How To’. Ridiculous innuendo, a genuinely good tune, and a proper singer that doesn’t mind taking the mickey out of themselves. Some might blanche at a soul legend like Hayes only making number one by growling Now suck on my balls! I am not one of those people. And it’s not like he’d come especially close in the previous three decades: a #10 in 1975 with ‘Disco Connection’, after a #4 in 1971 with the iconic ‘Theme from ‘Shaft’’.

Chef was of course a character in 1998’s breakout cartoon, ‘South Park’. I was slap-bang in the middle of the show’s target demographic, and the playground that year had been full of kids shouting ‘Oh my god, you killed Kenny!’ (though I wasn’t allowed to watch the show myself). ‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ had featured in an episode a few months earlier, and proved memorable enough to be released as a single, pushing the actual Spice Girls all the way in the race for Christmas number one, and finishing only eight thousand copies behind them. (In doing so it recorded the highest weekly sale for a #2 since 1984.)

‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ isn’t the only chart hit to come from South Park. The following year ‘Mr. Hankey The Christmas Poo’ made the festive charts, peaking at #4. A funny postscript to this record, though, is the fact that Isaac Hayes had joined the Church of Scientology in the 1990s, and left South Park in 2005 after an episode satirising said Church. He also presumably disowned his sole British chart-topper. Hayes died in 2008, following a stroke.

805. ‘Gym and Tonic’, by Spacedust

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We’re about to encounter one of the biggest pop songs of all time, from a legendary star. But before that, a brief interlude. A real ‘um, okay’ moment…

Gym and Tonic, by Spacedust (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 18th – 25th October 1998

‘Gym and Tonic’ is, essentially, an aerobics workout set to a hi-NRG beat. Stand with your feet parallel, A little more than hip distance apart… Apparently it was based on a Jane Fonda workout from the eighties, with the vocals here re-recorded to avoid a lawsuit. How fun it would have been if Jane had allowed it, and had featured on a number one single!

Although had that been the case, then it would presumably have been the original version by French DJ Bob Sinclar, very popular in Ibiza that summer, that would have been the hit. It was produced by Thomas Bangalter, AKA one half of Daft Punk (Yes, a member of Daft Punk, one of the most respected dance acts of all time, is involved in this nonsense.) Their version was never fully released due to the Fonda sample, but survives on YouTube. I’m not sure even an experienced musicologist could tell the difference between that and the Spacedust version – a few scratchy cuts aside – but they got away with it.

The most interesting thing here, musically, is the Balearic riff that plays over the top of the beat and all the five, six, seven, eight and backs. It sounds like all the dance hits to come between 1999 and the start of the new century. The future of dance music, first revealed in a piece of fluff like this…

Still, you can never underestimate the popularity of a dance song that tells you what to do in the lyrics: ‘The Time Warp’, ‘The Cha-Cha Slide’… This. All big hits. Although ‘Gym and Tonic’ did also strike it lucky by sneaking a week on top with very low sales. It was by far the year’s lowest selling #1, only the 109th biggest selling hit of 1998 (meaning that seventy-nine singles which didn’t make number one outsold it).

Spacedust were a British production duo, and beyond this surprise chart-topper they had one further hit, a #20 with ‘Let’s Get Down’. And I’ll admit I’ve been bopping along to this track for the past half hour, enjoying its infectious energy. It’s silly, but not at all heinous. And the video is a whole lot of camp fun, almost reinventing the phrase ‘cheap and cheerful’. It’s oddities like this which keep writing these posts interesting. It can’t all be era-defining pop classics. Speaking of which…

783. ‘Doctor Jones’, by Aqua

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Aqua, looking for all the world like they’d be one-hit wonders, surprise us all by returning with not just a second hit, but a second number one.

Doctor Jones, by Aqua (their 2nd of three #1s)

2 weeks, from 1st – 15th February 1998

Perhaps the trick was that they stuck to a clear ‘if it ain’t broke’ formula. Female and male vocals, Eurodance production, about five different ultra-catchy hooks… The demand was obviously there post-‘Barbie Girl’. The tempo is increased from their earlier hit, giving this a proper Hi-NRG bounce to it. And like its predecessor, this single is also based around a pop culture icon.

The ‘Doctor Jones’ of the title is Indiana Jones, as made clear by the video in which Lene (formerly Barbie) and the other two members of Aqua plough through the jungle in search of René (formerly Ken). Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones wake up now… prattles the chorus, and he does wake up just in time to save his bandmates from being boiled alive. As with the ‘Barbie Girl’ video it’s good camp fun.

This whole endeavour, is of course, complete cheese, and if your tolerance for cheesy Eurotrash is low then this record certainly won’t be for you. I’m fairly immune to it, but the ayypee-aieeooaayyoo-ayypeeay-eh (I believe that is the official transliteration…) line in the chorus is annoying even to me. And sadly, René’s role is much less than it was in ‘Barbie Girl’, with his gravelly voice being used mainly to echo Lene’s lead.

It’s not as good as their biggest hit, or as memorable, but it does successfully manage the difficult balancing act of replicating what made the former such a big smash, recycling it cleverly, but without simply churning out ‘Barbie Girl Part II’. That’s quite a hard trick to pull off, especially when their first hit had had such massive success but had been filed away quite firmly in the ‘novelty’ drawer.

I’m starting to sound like quite the Aqua apologist. But it wasn’t just me, honest! 1998 was their year! Not only did they manage this second number one, they will soon manage a third. A third that will prove them capable of writing a proper pop song, and not just novelty dance numbers.

778. ‘Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh!”, by The Teletubbies

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From one of the classiest, most understated ‘novelty-in-inverted-commas’ #1s off all time… To the other end of the spectrum…

Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh!’, by The Teletubbies (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 7th – 21st December 1997

It’s a remix of the theme song to the biggest children’s TV show of the age: the Teletubbies. First aired in March 1997, by August it was reaching an audience of two million. I was one of them, I must admit, though I was a good decade older than the intended audience. I don’t know, there was just something grotesquely fascinating about the four… creatures (what the hell are they?) the grassy dome they lived in, the flowers that talked, the pink pancakes they ate… So huge was the programme that a spin-off single was inevitable, just in time for the Christmas number one race. They didn’t quite make it, but two weeks at number one plus over a million copies sold is pretty impressive.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, as a pop single this is utter garbage. It just about works as a theme-tune (though in these days of streaming you’d happily ‘Skip Intro’) but removed from the context of the show it sounds absolutely bonkers. And not good bonkers. There’s the babyish voices, the rather camp narrator, interludes in which some sheep sing ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ and a matronly old lady sings ‘Mary, Mary Quite Contrary’, and a prolonged bout of diarrhoea (which turns out to be the tubby custard machine, when you watch the video…) All set to a rinky-dink synthesised banjo riff.

At the same time, there’s not much point in getting annoyed about this. It is what it is. Crap, but also something of a time capsule, a glimpse back into those carefree, late-twentieth century days. You could raise an eyebrow at the ridiculous quantities of this record that were sold – well over half a million copies during its two weeks at the top – but then single sales were at their highest ever levels in late-1997, something we can perhaps explore in our next post.

The obvious comparison to make here is to cast your minds back four years, to Mr. Blobby’s similarly bizarre festive release. But Blobby’s song has an anarchic quality to it, a level of chaos and a tongue-in-cheek quality that ‘Teletubbies Say “Eh-Oh!”’ lacks. The only way you could find another level on which to enjoy this song is if you were seriously high.

Finally, I have to raise a hand and admit that I am, in my small way, to blame for this record doing so well. Or at least my younger brother is, as he bought me a cassingle copy for Christmas that year. I wonder how many other copies were bought as a joke, rather than for any love of the song. Teletubbies was only on our screens for four years (in its original run) but its cultural impact was massive. In fact, if you have a spare minute, why not remind yourself of the ‘Tinky Winky Controversy’, and feel a sense of relief that something so narrow-mindedly crazy couldn’t happen in today’s level-headed world…

776. ‘Barbie Girl’, by Aqua

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One of the reasons that ‘Spice Up Your Life’, the Spice Girls hot new single, didn’t stay at number one for very long is perhaps because Spice mania was cooling off. But another is that one of the year’s (nay, the decade’s) biggest hits was waiting in the wings…

Barbie Girl, by Aqua (their 1st of three #1s)

4 weeks, from 27th October – 23rd November 1997

Hiya Barbie… Hi Ken… Before we get to the song’s subject, and the lyrics, we should note that otherwise this is fairly standard, late-nineties Eurodance beat and production. Synth strings and an airy keyboard line (I think the technical term is ‘Balearic’). Fill it with generic lyrics about reaching for the sky and living it large, and you’d have a standard dance hit, on a par with Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night’, say. But the melody and the production are not why this was such a big hit.

‘Barbie Girl’ was so huge because of its subject matter, and how it somehow manages to be utterly dumb and yet quite clever; an annoying novelty and yet a total earworm. Take two of the song’s biggest hooks: Come on Barbie, Let’s go party… Ah, ah, ah, yeah… and Life in plastic, It’s fantastic… The first is stupidly simple, and yet it’s been in your head for the best part of three decades. The second is actually quite brilliant. The whole song succeeds because it constantly straddles this line between greatness and nonsense.

You could make too much of the song’s social commentary. It’s got some fun lines, and some borderline innuendo; but it’s hardly a feminist manifesto. The song’s best section is the second verse, because the way the beat rests before swishing into it is great, and because it contains the most ‘challenging’ lyrics. I can act like a star, I can beg on my knees… Barbie chirrups, before Ken ignores her with a Come jump in, Bimbo friend, Let us do it again… (Personally, René Dif’s gravelly, sleazy ‘Ken’ is the reason this song works. I think if it were all on Lene Nystrøm’s high-pitched ‘Barbie’ it would really start to grate.)

I think this also might be an example of the ABBA-factor, which I’ve mentioned before with non-English speaking acts. Because English wasn’t Aqua’s first language, the lyrics are perhaps simpler than someone with a native-level ability would have come up with. But this also means that the lyrics stick very easily. Aqua were Danish, and this was the third single from their debut album. They had been around since 1989, though the closest they’d come to success was as Joyspeed, with this truly spectacular happy-hardcore version of ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’.

Mattel, the creators of Barbie, were not amused by this global smash, claiming that it besmirched the doll’s image and turned her into a ‘sex object’. They embarked on a five-year lawsuit, while Aqua’s label filed a countersuit for defamation. Both were dismissed, the judge wrapping up with the brilliant line: “Both parties are advised to chill.” By 2009, Mattel’s stance had softened, and they were using the track in adverts. By 2023, they had licensed the song for use in the ‘Barbie’ movie, as well as a remake by Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice. In fact, watching the video to ‘Barbie Girl’ now, it’s interesting to see just how similar it is to the world created for the movie.

You’d have gotten very long odds on Aqua having any follow-up hits, as this has ‘one-hit wonder’ written all over it. Well, not only did they not disappear, they have two further number ones to come…

718. ‘Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)’, by The Outhere Brothers

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Is 1995 the year with the biggest disparity between what it is remembered for, and what actually made #1? 1977 might have a case, the year punk exploded yet in which David Soul was the breakthrough star. 1995, though…?

Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle), by The Outhere Brothers (their 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 26th March – 2nd April 1995

I mention this because this next number one has left me in a state of shock. Shock at how I don’t really remember it. Shock at some of the lyrics. And shock at just how bloody awful it is… Biiiyyaaatch!

I thought that Rednex had my upcoming ‘Worst #1 Award’ in the bag. But as horrible as ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ is, at least it is identifiable as a ‘song’. This is an absolute racket. The pitch of the singer’s voice as he repeats the title line: Don’t stop movin’ baby oh that booty drive me crazy…, the one-note beat and the bubble-popping sound effect, the way that that one line is chopped up over and over again, ad nauseum… Some mixes are better than others – and the video attached at the foot of this post is the most palatable version, with a Hi-NRG beat – but most are dire.

I’m torn between wrapping this post up as soon as possible, trying to forget that this record ever existed, and delving a bit deeper. The radio edit of ‘Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)’ is repetitively, mind-numbingly, boring. But that wasn’t the reason this made number one. For the other, non-edited mixes reveal this to be the filthiest number one single we’ve heard so far on this countdown.

No, make that one of the filthiest number ones, ever. Period. Even in this post-‘WAP’ world, the lyrics here still raise an eyebrow. There’s that opening Biiiyyaaatch! for a start. Then there’s: Put your ass on my face… I love the way your… No I can’t type the rest. Girl you’ve got to suck my… Nope, still can’t. I’m not a prude, but this isn’t something I’ve never had to consider in my seven hundred and seventeen previous posts. The worst word we’ve encountered so far has been, I think, ‘bullshit’. And that’s a word I heard on Radio 4 the other day… I knew the 1990s would see morals and standards loosen (God, I sound like Mary Whitehouse), but I though it would be gradual. A ‘bitch’ here and a ‘fuck’ there. But no, it all arrived at once, right here: a smorgasbord of vulgarity. Which means that ‘Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)’ is actually a hugely important chart-topper…

But nah, I don’t want to give it that sort of weight. It happened. Swearing in #1 singles is fine now. Let’s move on. (And anyway, luckily for all of us, The Outhere Brothers have an even bigger hit coming up very soon…) They were a duo from Chicago – yet another pair of fake chart-topping siblings – and this was their breakthrough hit, after previous releases such as ‘Pass the Toilet Paper’ had failed to chart. Thirteen-year-old boys around the world then kept the pair in hits for the next couple of years, though their subsequent album ‘1 Polish, 2 Biscuits and a Fish Sandwich’ wasn’t as successful (and you can look up the meaning of that title, if you dare…)

Back to what I mentioned in the intro, about 1995 being a strange year, in which most of the acts and songs we remember the year for didn’t make the top of the charts. It’s a theme I’ll return to, especially when a different gruesome twosome dominate later in the year. Up next, though, I’m sort of instantly proven wrong, for it’s the decade’s biggest boyband, with one of the nation’s best-loved songs…

(The ‘best’ version of the song…)

(The explicit version, if you must…)

715. ‘Cotton Eye Joe’, by Rednex

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We’ve just ticked over the exact midway point of the nineties, as we head into 1995. One of the most renowned years in British music, during which Britpop, and some of the nation’s best-loved bands, went mainstream. And yes, we will get to all that… But kicking off the year we have something much less fondly remembered.

Cotton Eye Joe, by Rednex (their 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 8th – 29th January 1995

This jaw-clenchingly, skin tighteningly bad piece of techno-bluegrass can only be explained as a hangover from the festive period, from New Year’s parties full of people too drunk to care what was blasting out over the stereo… Oh, who can I kid? By now it’s clear that the British public need no excuse to send utter dross to the top of the charts. ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’ is shit – so shit it was guaranteed to be massive.

It was a perennial at my school discos, but I didn’t like it aged nine and haven’t chosen to hear it for the better part of thirty years. You need a strong stomach to listen to it even now: the mix of banjos, fiddles and heavy synths makes me feel very tense, something the horse and gunshot sound effects don’t do much to alleviate, while the aggressive chanting makes me wonder if hell is actually being locked in an eternal barn dance.

The video builds on this theme – I’m genuinely not sure if they were going for something funny, or for something more like a horror movie. The Rednex all play straggly-haired, yellow-teethed, rat-fondling hillbillies, who appear to be subjecting a younger, prettier girl to a never-ending ride on a bucking bronco. I don’t say this at all lightly, but I would take ‘Mr Blobby’ over this scary mess.

Rednex were Swedish (not American, sadly) and had stage names like Bobby Sue and Ken Tacky. ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ was their first hit, and in the UK they would manage only one more of note: ‘Old Pop in an Oak’ which made #12. In Sweden they remained successful well into the 2000s, scoring chart-toppers there as late as 2008! The mind boggles… The album that their two biggest hits came from was titled ‘Sex and Violins’, which is possibly the only funny thing the band ever put their name to.

Sad thing is, the history behind ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ is quite interesting. It pre-dates the US Civil War, probably originating among black slaves in the cotton fields. Proposals for what the phrase means vary from someone being drunk, to someone with milky cataracts, to the contrast between black skin and white eyeballs. It was first published in 1882, and has been recorded in country, polka, and trad-Irish versions, as well as featuring in the movie ‘Urban Cowboy’.

All that history has been obliterated by the Rednex version, which became a worldwide hit and which we will all be hearing until our dying days. It even made the charts in the US, which was unusual for a Eurodance track, and became a sports event/kids’ party standard. In recent years, some sports teams have stopped playing it in their stadiums due to the song’s potentially racist origins. Usually I’m not a fan of cancel culture, but I’ll make an exception if it means never hearing this particular chart-topper ever again…