90s dance

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.

825. ‘Sweet Like Chocolate’, by Shanks & Bigfoot

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I was about to sound the random dance hit klaxon, 1999’s most used alarm, before I noticed that this next number one isn’t really dance. I was going to claim it as drum ‘n’ bass, but then realised that it was actually our first example of a very turn-of-the-century genre: garage.

Sweet Like Chocolate, by Shanks & Bigfoot (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 23rd May – 6th June 1999

Sadly this has nothing to do with garage rock. Or with car repair. The genre stems from Paradise Garage, a NYC gay nightclub popular in the ‘70s and ‘80s (and which had been built as a parking garage back in the ‘20s). From there we can trace a route from disco in the seventies, to garage house in the eighties (alongside Chicago house acts like Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley), to the 90s when it crossed the Atlantic, got sped up, and became known as UK garage. From there we can look into a future of grime, and drill… A rushed potted history I know, but I’m very amused to discover that this often misogynist and homophobic genre can trace its family tree back to a gay bar presumably full of leather queens and cock-duster moustaches…

Not that there’s anything offensive about ‘Sweet Like Chocolate’. No, our introduction to garage is as light and fluffy as they come, with some staccato strings and a gentle brass section that builds over the 2-step beat that will become one of the sounds of the next few years. I’ll readily admit that I was never – now, or at the time – the biggest fan of the genre, but also that this is as pleasant an intro as we could have wished for.

What I’ve always remember about this record are the high-pitched vocals, from a singer named Sharon Woolf. And the animated video, in which the entire world is made of chocolate (and which now looks wonderfully dated). Oh yes, and the jokes at school about how this might not actually be about chocolate… You are sweet on the tip of my tongue, You are warm like the rays of the sun… (The steamy noises that Woolf makes in the extended original mix only serve to confirm my teenage suspicions.)

Shanks & Bigfoot were a duo called Steven Meade and Danny Langsman, who had had a #20 hit the year before, ‘Straight from the Heart’, under the name Doollally. Following the success of ‘Sweet Like Chocolate’, they released the same song, as Shanks & Bigfoot, and made #9. I wonder if there are any other songs which have charted twice by ‘different’ acts?

Though I’ll probably be down on the many of the garage records which will top the charts between now and 2002, I should emphasise the authenticity of the genre. Garage relied on underground nightclubs, MCs, and pirate radio to break through. I may not much like it, but it was the sound of the streets, like skiffle and punk had been to generations before. Which is something, in an era where manufactured pop held so much sway.

820. ‘Flat Beat’, by Mr. Oizo

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And now for something slightly different…

Flat Beat, by Mr. Oizo (his 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 28th March – 11th April 1999

…please don’t adjust your dial. I did earlier bill 1999 as the year of the random dance hit, and dance hits don’t come much more random than this.

Yes, it’s repetitive, but when the song is called ‘Flat Beat’ I think that’s largely the point. And yes, some of the myriad effects, pulses and throbs that make up this record are odd. But there’s something hypnotising in this track’s minimalism, and in that strange, vibrating bass riff that you can almost feel pressing against your eardrums (this is a chart-topper best appreciated through headphones).

Every thirty seconds or so, as you begin to tire of the simple beat, another little element is added, just in time. I’m imagining Mr. Oizo taking a walk through his local rainforest, and using some of the stranger sounding animal calls to decorate this tune. The intro features a woman claiming that Quentin (Mr. Oizo’s real name) is a ‘real jerkie’. The album version ends on what sounds a lot like someone taking a piss. I can’t say I truly love ‘Flat Beat’, but I do enjoy how bloody weird it is.

‘Flat Beat’ was helped to the top of the charts by Flat Eric, a yellow puppet made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. In the video he runs a business, answering phones and smoking frankfurters. But it was his appearance in a series of Levi’s adverts that made him famous, and that necessitated Mr. Oizo make a tune to go with them.

This is the latest – the seventh – and I believe final ‘Levi’s’ chart-topper. Since the mid-eighties we’ve had the jeans makers to thank for curios like ‘The Joker’, ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’, and Stiltskin’s ‘Inside’ making number one. Like its predecessors, ‘Flat Beat’ would have been nowhere near #1 without the ad campaign, but I will say that all of the Levi’s-resurrected chart-toppers have been worthwhile in their own way.

Mr. Oizo AKA Quentin Dupieux is a French DJ and filmmaker (‘oiseau’ being French for ‘bird’). ‘Flat Beat’ was a bonus track on his first album, and he’s had a few others which have been minor hits in his homeland. In the UK he has gold-star, purest one-hit wonder status, with nothing else even grazing the lower reaches of the charts.

It’s also worth noticing that, spoken intro aside, this is a purely instrumental track. Wikipedia lists it as the 25th instrumental number one, though they count ‘Hoots Mon’, and ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ in that list, which seems generous. What’s indisputable is that there have been precious few since the genre’s heyday in the fifties and early-sixties – this is only the ‘90s second instrumental after ‘Doop’, while there were zero in the ‘80s – and that there are precious few more to come.

The album version:

814. ‘You Don’t Know Me’ by Armand Van Helden ft. Duane Harden

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A fairly unusual rock track is followed on top of the charts by a fairly generic dance track. Standard January fare for the late ‘90s…

You Don’t Know Me, by Armand Van Helden (his 1st of two #1s) ft. Duane Harden

1 week, from 31st January – 7th February 1999

We should though prepare to meet more and more of these one-off dance tracks in the coming months, to the point where there will become commonplace. This is the sound of 1999, really: ATB, Eiffel 65, Mr. Oizo… All kicked off by Armand Van Helden. Whom we have met before in this blog, with his uncredited remix of Tori Amos’ ‘Professional Widow’ (another January number one!)

And unlike some of those dance hits soon to come, ‘You Don’t Know Me’ has a nice retro-house feel, with a disco groove and soulful vocals from Duane Harden. It feels like something that could have been a hit much earlier in the decade. Which might be explained by the fact that this is, naturally, a mish-mash of samples, with strings that date from the seventies and drums from 1992. The eight-minute original version also features a spoken intro from ‘Dexter’s Laboratory’. As in, the cartoon.

Although Duane Arden has an excellent, soulful growl to his voice, the lyrics are standard ‘living my best life’ dance fodder. I’m tired and I’ve had enough, It’s my life and I’m living it now… But really, nobody wants to think too much on the dancefloor. Arden wrote the words by himself, once Van Helden had finished the music, like a dance version of Elton and Bernie.

Like many of the previous dance number ones, I don’t hate it. It’s fine. It washes over me pleasantly enough, and has caused me to do a couple of involuntary shoulder shimmies. But at the same time, like many dance tunes, after the first minute I start to find it a little repetitive. Dance music is not made for a guy sitting at a desk to analyse. Duane Harden’s week at the top was the pinnacle of his pop career; while Armand Van Helden will continue to produce and write hits throughout the 2000s, until his final #1 in a decade’s time.

For a fairly innocuous and forgotten chart-topper, this is a big one for me personally. I turned thirteen on the day this entered at number one (though I am a bit peeved that I just miss out on having the Offspring as a birthday #1). I apologise in advance for all the teenage nostalgia that will inevitable cloud my judgement as we cover the coming seven years’ worth of number ones…

811. ‘Praise You’, by Fatboy Slim

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A 4th chart-topping guise for Norman Cook, then. After some indie a cappella with the Housemartins, some dub-dance with Beats International, and a funky remix of Cornershop’s ‘Brimful of Asha’, he finally makes number one under his own steam…

Praise You, by Fatboy Slim (his 1st and only solo #1)

1 week, from 10th – 17th January 1999

The piano line is captivating, as are the smokily soulful opening vocals. We’ve come a long, long way together, Through the hard times and the good… I like the way the final note of these lines is dragged out, and out, and out… and out, as the percussion builds in anticipation of a monumental drop… That never comes. Just more of the same groove, and more of the same vocals.

As on ‘Brimful of Asha’, Fatboy Slim’s mixing style is crowd-pleasing and accessible. Nothing too fancy, nothing too hardcore; just big beats that make you want to dance. But the intro is definitely the best part, oozing a promise that isn’t quite delivered. It’s appealing and catchy, but there are only so many ways that you can chop and twist the two vocal lines that make up this entire song. The album version drags on for a much too long five and a half minutes, though a more palatable radio-edit was used for the single.

‘Praise You’ is a wild smorgasbord of samples, prime among them ‘Take Yo’ Praise’ by Camille Yarborough. Thus twenty-five years later I belatedly realise that it is a woman’s voice singing on this track… I genuinely had no idea. Buried deeper we have a piano line from the Steve Miller Band, drums from John Fogerty, the theme to a cartoon called ‘Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids’, and a guitar lick from Disney anthem ‘It’s a Small World’. From Mickey Mouse, to CCR, to Bill Cosby; ‘eclectic’ doesn’t even begin to cover it!

The video was also a big selling point, secretly filmed in front of Fox Bruin Theatre in LA. It’s a flashmob, at least ten years before that concept went viral, featuring some apeshit breakdancing from director Spike Jonze. It wasn’t staged at all, apparently, including the moment when a theatre employee storms out and turns off their stereo.

Norman Cook finally scores a solo number one, then, and it acts as a swansong to one of the more leftfield chart-topping careers. There can’t be many, if any, other acts to have four different #1s under four different guises. He still had plenty more hits to come, though, and the other singles from his ‘You’ve Come a Long Way Baby’ album, like ‘Rockafeller Skank’ and ‘Gangster Trippin’, really are the sound of the late nineties for me. He also remained an active remixer, and I would point you in the direction of his great work on Missy Elliott’s ‘Gossip Folks’, and the Beastie Boys’ ‘Body Movin’.

Never Had a #1… Sash!

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I thought my ‘Never Had a #1…’ series had reached a natural end. I’d gone through the main suspects: The Who, Bon Jovi, Janet Jackson, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, among others, and was struggling to think of many other significant acts that hadn’t topped the UK singles chart. Until I remembered the act that can lay claim to being the unluckiest in chart history… Sash! (The exclamation mark is theirs, not mine…)

Between 1997 and 2000, Sash! scored five #2 singles without managing a single chart topper. Of course, plenty of acts have finished as runner-up more often than that. Madonna has twelve number two hits to her name, Cliff and Kylie have eleven… Elvis has seventeen if you include his 2005 re-releases. But the difference is that those legends also managed plenty of number ones between them. Not Sash!

Sash! were – still are – a German DJ and production four-piece, formed in 1995. They had a distinctive Euro-trance sound, and a clear ‘if it ain’t broke’ approach to hit-making, so this rundown of their tunes might start to sound like a spot-the-difference exercise…

‘Encore Une Fois’ – #2 in 1997

If you only listen to one of these, then make it this one. This is a banger, and the only one of Sash’s hits that I truly remember. The female vocalist has always made me think of a station announcer. The French title translates as ‘one more time’, which is fitting because…

‘Ecuador’ ft. Rodriguez – #2 in 1997

They came back with more of the same. For their follow up hit, they swapped a woman shouting in French for a man shouting in Spanish. Rodriguez, presumably. This is still pretty catchy, a little lighter, a little more House-y.

‘Stay’ ft. La Trec – #2 in 1997

Completing their hat-trick of #2s in 1997, we get an intro in a 3rd language. English! By this point it’s getting hard to tell one trance riff from the next, but at least this one does have verses and choruses, and not just shouting.

‘Mysterious Times’ ft. Tina Cousins – #2 in 1998

The second single from their second album (the lead only made #3!) is a little more subtle. I’d also say a little more bland. I actually miss the shouting.

‘Adelante’ – #2 in 2000

We return to something a little more banging, with a little more Spanish, for Sash’s final UK #2. ‘Adelante’ means ‘forward’, which is fitting for a song released in February 2000, with a whole new millenium stretching out promisingly ahead of us… I would struggle to tell any of their non-‘Encore Une Fois’ hits from the other, although this track has to be praised for the novel use of accordions in a dance song.

If anyone has any other suggestions for acts that would merit a ‘Never Had a #1’ post (as in acts with lots of hits but no chart-toppers, rather than a band you really like but that have never been above #23) then let me know in the comments!

Next up, we prepare to party like it’s 1999…