90s dance

685. ‘No Limit’, by 2 Unlimited

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

I know that, in the real world, people don’t usually buy records just to get rid of the previous number one. They buy them because they like the song, or they like the singer, or because they found them in the Woolies’ bargain bin… But, after Whitney Houston had set up camp at the summit for the entire winter of 1992-93, the record that finally replaced it feels refreshingly… different.

No Limit, by 2 Unlimited (their 1st and only #1)

5 weeks, from 7th February – 14th March 1993

Let me hear you say yeah! Booting Whitney out the way is a proper slab of early nineties techno (or should that be ‘techno, techno, techno, techno’?) A sledgehammer synth riff, a breakneck tempo, minimalist lyrics, and a rap. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am. Job’s a good ‘un.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, There’s no limit… I may have claimed in my post on Snap!’s ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ that dance tunes don’t need deep lyrics. But the lyrics to ‘No Limit’ make most dance tunes sound like ‘American Pie’. Lots of ‘no no’s, and a bit about reaching for the sky. The UK release even deleted the rap – a bit too wordy – and replaced it with some more ‘oh’s, and some ‘techno’s.

Is it wrong that I like this more than some (most…) of the earlier dance number ones? Records like ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’, ‘Killer’, and ‘Ride on Time’ are lauded as classics, while ‘No Limit’ is hidden under the carpet like an embarrassing stain. Well I’m here to reclaim this song. Yes, it’s simplistic, bordering on moronic – three notes and a lot of shouting – but, damn it, it’s fun. I like dance music best when it has the aggression and energy of rock ‘n’ roll and, replace the synths with scuzzy guitars here and you’ve got yourself something pretty punk.

And I admit, I have a soft spot for this tune, because it’s one of the first pop songs that I was aware of at the time. I have distinct memories of this being sung, over and over, in my school playground. 1993 was the year I turned seven, and the songs that made number one started becoming more and more relevant to me. I apologise in advance for any self-indulgence as we head on through the tunes of my childhood, and will try to keep the reminiscing to a minimum…

I’d have put good money on 2 Unlimited being German. Something about the sheer relentlessness of the beat, the ruthless efficiency of the lyrics… National stereotypes aside, most of the finest Europop (think Boney M, Falco and Snap!) has also been of Germanic origin. And I was close! They were Dutch/Belgian, and followed the Snap! formula of a male rapper and a female singer. Between 1991 and 1994 they scored eight UK Top 10s. I’m not sure any are better than ‘No Limit’ – they certainly had a formula, and stuck to it – so it feels right that this was their one and only chart-topper.

680. ‘Ebeneezer Goode’, by The Shamen

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

Hot on the heels of ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ comes another ‘90s dance classic…

Ebeneezer Goode, by The Shamen (their 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 13th September – 11th October 1992

And as magisterial as Snap!’s track was, ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ represents the flip-side of dance music in the early years of the decade. Aggressive and in-your-face, the opening voiceover sets the tone: A great philosopher once wrote… Naughty, naughty, Very naughty…. And off we go, cackling like Sid James…

Since forever, pop music and drugs have gone together. Sex and drugs and rock and roll, and all that. But no genre has ever been quite so entwined with illegal substances as electronic dance, and with one Class-A substance in particular. So when a track comes along by one of the big dance acts of the day, shamelessly celebrating said drug, and getting all the grown-ups’ knickers in a twist at the same time, you know it’s going to be a big old hit.

The clever bit here (I was going to use the word ‘genius’, but I think that would be stretching it slightly) is that the drug reference isn’t immediately obvious. ‘Ebeneezer Goode’, you might think, sounds like a character invented by Charles Dickens. Eezer good, Eezer good, He’s Ebeneezer Goode… A silly novelty song, parents around the country might have thought, as they heard it blaring from their teenagers’ bedrooms. Harmless nonsense. But, wait…

And like the teacher who’s twigged on far too late that the class is having a joke at their expense, the parents realise that the chorus could just as well be saying ‘E’s are good, ‘E’s are good… ‘E’s as in Ecstasy… And look, the song’s at number one already. It’s not big, and it’s not clever, but it is pretty amusing. Very naughty indeed…

But amid all the innuendo, the guffawing and the gurning, this is still a banger. The joke would have worn very thin, very quickly, if this wasn’t a good pop tune. I don’t think it’s quite up there with ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’, and I don’t think you’d want to hear it all that often, but it’s a lot of fun. And it’s a significant number one because rave culture isn’t really represented at the top of the charts, despite being one of the big musical movements of the day, and while this is diluted, poppy rave, and it lost the Shamen a lot of ‘hardcore’ fans, it still counts.

It’s also, despite the modern sound, a treasure trove of peculiarly British references. We’ve got rhyming slang, and a shout-out to Vera Lynn, of all people: Anybody got any Vera’s…? Lovely… (‘Vera Lynns’ being rhyming slang for ‘skins’, which people used to mix cannabis and ecstasy) and a reference to ‘Mr Punchinella’ AKA Mr Punch from ‘Punch & Judy’. While  in the second verse there’s even a bit of sensible advice: But go easy on old ‘Eezer, ‘E’s the love you could lose… Pop pills responsibly, kids.

The BBC, always up for a good banning, initially refused to air the song, but relinquished when it became a huge hit. Hilariously, the week that ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ climbed to number one was the Corporation’s ‘drug awareness week’. On TOTP the band changed some of the lyrics, including adding a reference to ‘underlay’, which they explained as a ‘gratuitous rug reference’. Boom and indeed tish. It was far from the first hit song to reference an illegal substance – The Beatles were doing it twenty-five years earlier – but few had done it quite so shamelessly.

The Shamen were a Scottish band, formed in Aberdeen in 1985, and had been around since the very earliest days of house music. They started out making psychedelic pop, before moving to a more electronic sound. This wasn’t their first Top 10 hit, but it was so unexpectedly huge that the band decided to delete it while it was still on top of the charts, so that it wouldn’t come to define them. Sadly, though, it still did, and their hits grew smaller and smaller until they split in 1999. But, as founding member Colin Angus says, ‘Uncle Ebeneezer is still looking after me to this day.’ Whether he’s still dropping MDMA, or he’s talking about royalties, I do not know, but it seems fitting to end this post on a double-entendre.

679. ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’, by Snap!

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

I’m not a huge dance music fan – I feel I should have that phrase on permanent ‘copy paste’, given how many times I’ve said/will say it – but when a dance song clicks…

Rhythm Is a Dancer, by Snap! (their 2nd and final #1)

6 weeks, from 2nd August – 13th September 1992

‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ is one of those that just clicks. And it clicks immediately, grabbing you as the atmospheric intro builds, from the three intertwining synth lines, to the drums, to the backing vocals. When the main vocals and the bass eventually kick in together, I’m inspired to compare it with the ultimate slow-build intro, ‘Smoke on the Water’. Yes, rock snobs, I went there…

The song as a whole is slick and streamlined, much more grown-up than Snap’s first chart-topper, ‘The Power’, which I found harsh and gimmicky. The lyrics are very generic – the title itself is nonsense, if you’ve ever stopped to think about it – but no dance tune needs deep lyrics. Rhythm is a dancer, It’s a soul’s companion… Lift your hands and voices, Free your mind and join us, You can feel it in the air… Complete waffle. But when you’re topless in a sweaty club, choking on the dry ice, it might sound like the dance equivalent of a hymn.

What ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ is best remembered for today, though – as well as being a 1990s club classic – is for its rapped verse. The fact that there’s a rap in the first place is still worth noting. Today it feels standard, but as I mentioned in my post on ‘Black or White’ the idea of sticking a rapped verse in your dance/pop song was a pretty new one in 1992. (‘The Power’ was one of the very first, in fact.) And this is one of the first raps that doesn’t feel tacked on, or gimmicky, bearing in mind that some previous hip-hop chart-toppers have involved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, and Vanilla Ice.

Let the rhythm ride you, Guide you, Sneak inside you… raps Turbo B, sounding like he’s spent the past two years practising. It’s fine, until he reaches the final line, and spoils it: I’m serious as cancer, When I say rhythm is a dancer… In fairness to Turbo, his first reaction was supposedly ‘No way am I singing that shit’. But sing it he did, to a mixed reaction. In my opinion, it’s so crass and so unexpected that it somehow works, and anyway Snap! didn’t invent it – it was a phrase that had been used in hip-hop tracks for years.

My only complaint about this majestic track is that it just glides to a finish. It’s a bit of a flat ending, but then the rest of the song is so cool and icily confident that to finish with something showy might have spoiled it. ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ has placed on all sorts of ‘Best Songs of the 90s’ and ‘Greatest Dance Tunes Ever’ sorts of lists, and has been re-recorded and/or re-leased by Snap! three times since this original release.

Despite being remembered now mainly for their two number ones, Snap! were genuinely huge in the first half of the 1990s, scoring nine Top 10 hits between 1990 and 1994. None were bigger than this, however – the second-highest seller of 1992. They remain active today, with original vocalist Penny Ford back on board, though sadly no more Turbo B.

677. ‘ABBA-esque E.P.’, by Erasure

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

Can there be anything camper than Erasure covering ABBA? How about Erasure recording an entire E.P. of ABBA covers, and called it ‘ABBA-esque’?

ABBA-Esque (E.P.), by Erasure (their 1st and only #1)

5 weeks, from 7th June – 12th July 1992

ABBA scored nine #1s between 1974 and 1980, making them at this point in time the fifth most successful chart-topping act (behind Elvis, the Beatles, Cliff, and The Shadows). But luckily, three of the four tunes Erasure chose to cover didn’t make top spot originally. Starting with, perhaps, ABBA’s greatest non-number one single…

I’m not sure which was the ‘lead’ single from the E.P. – I get the feeling it was track three, but they made videos for all of them – so I’ll go through them in order. We kick off with ‘Lay All Your Love on Me’, which was only ever released by ABBA as a 12” single. It’s the most faithful cover of the four, with the mood and tempo kept, and just the instrumentation updated to a post-SAW, Hi-NRG style. I love that they don’t change the pronouns in the lyrics, as most acts do when covering a song originally sung by a different gender, and we’re treated to Andy Bell asking how a grown up woman can ever fall so easily…

Of the four, I don’t think I’d ever heard their take on ‘S.O.S.’ before. And, of the four, it’s my least favourite. ‘S.O.S.’ is an important song in the ABBA canon: the song that extended ABBA’s career beyond simply being Eurovision winners; a genuine rock classic beloved of Ray Davies, Pete Townshend and The Sex Pistols. This over-processed take, though, fails to capture the soaring joy that can be found in the when you’re gone, how can I even try to go on… line in the original.

Track three then, and the one that represented this E.P. as a whole. ‘Take a Chance on Me’ was an ABBA chart-topper, back in February 1978. It’s an improvement on ‘S.O.S.’, but they’ve gone moodier than the original. They’ve also gone very early-nineties and added a ragga-style rap, or toast, by one MC Kinky. It’s a bold move, but then by this point in the E.P. maybe they were thinking it might have started to feel a bit by-the-numbers. It certainly shakes things up. The video for ‘Take a Chance…’ is the highlight of the entire project: Vince and Andy pout, gurn and flirt with one another, both as themselves and in drag as Agnetha and Frida. I’m sure it was done lovingly, but I do wonder what the ladies thought…

We end on what is probably my favourite of the four: a pounding, throbbing, techno-take on ‘Voulez Vous’. The intro, in fact, isn’t a million miles from something you’d hear at a hardcore rave. Here Erasure succeed in completely updating disco-era ABBA to a 1992 sound, which is testament either to the strength of their interpretation, of Benny and Björn’s songwriting, or maybe both. (‘Voulez Vous’ also includes some of my personal favourite ABBA lyrics: I know what you think, The girl means business so I’ll offer her a drink… and We’ve done it all before, And now we’re back to get some more, You know what I mean…)Years later, a fifth cover – ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!’ – was added to the E.P., but as it wasn’t around when this topped the charts I won’t bring it up.

Are any of the four covers better than the originals? No, of course not. But that doesn’t mean that this wasn’t a worthwhile exercise. For a start it got Erasure an overdue #1, after almost a decade of releases and twelve previous Top 10 hits. But even better than that, it started The ABBA Revival.

It seems strange to say in 2023, but even I can remember a time when ABBA weren’t the world’s most beloved band. By the late-eighties they were a punchline, an embarrassment, records to be hidden under the bed rather than publicly displayed. Erasure unashamedly covering four of their hits, allowing kids to discover them and adults to remember just how good ABBA had been, started us down the road to ‘ABBA Gold’ (which was released later in 1992) becoming one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, to ‘Muriel’s Wedding’, to the ‘Mamma Mia’ stage show and films, to the band’s holographic comeback. As a ‘thank you’, ABBA tribute act Björn Again (who in 1992, believe it or not, opened for Nirvana – Kurt Cobain being another factor in the ABBA-naissance) released ‘Erasure-ish’, with covers of ‘A Little Respect’ and ‘Stop!’

676. ‘Please Don’t Go’ / ‘Game Boy’, by KWS

/ UK #1s blog / 6 Comments

Do my ears deceive me, or are we entering yet another new phase in dance? As someone who isn’t that into dance music, the way in which I’ve been noticing new trends in the genre has surprised me… From house in the mid-80s, to sampling, to the rave influenced early nineties hits… And now we enter the ‘golden age of dance’.

Please Don’t Go / Game Boy, by KWS (their 1st and only #1)

5 weeks, from 3rd May – 7th June 1992

I don’t think people actually call it that. But between 1992 and 1997, even though Britpop is what the 1990s are remembered for, it was dance music that ruled the charts. And I’d say it starts here, with what is a fairly lacklustre remake of a KC & The Sunshine Band hit from a decade or so earlier…

Even as someone who doesn’t love dance music, I’m excited at the prospect of covering some of the dance number ones on the horizon: the Prodigy, Chemical Brothers… 2 Unlimited. But for every fun and fresh electronic #1, there are lazy remakes like this. It’s got a fairly low beats-per-minute – though not slow enough to be ‘chillout’ – it’s got elements of house, a hint of trance… It dabbles in different styles, but doesn’t commit to any, and ends up quite dull. (To be fair, the original is also fairly pedestrian, compared to KC’s more famous hits. It made #3 in 1980, and was also the first Billboard chart-topper of the ‘80s.)

And yet, this fairly forgettable tune was number one for five weeks… Perhaps now is as good a time as any to address the elephant in the room. We’re almost halfway through 1992, and we’ve only had four number ones. As I mentioned in an earlier post, 1992’s turnover is the slowest for thirty years, and it’s down to two things. We’re in one of those slumps that come along every decade or so: think the early sixties, between rock ‘n’ roll and the Beatles, or the mid-seventies, between glam and new wave. Currently we’re puttering around lost between the SAW-led late-‘80s and Britpop.

In addition, the way people were buying music was changing. After decades as the main format, vinyl ‘45s were slowly being phased out in favour of CD singles. At the peak of vinyl’s popularity, in the late 1970s, an act had to sell an average of 150k copies to make number one; in 1992 it was taking only 60-70k. By the end of this decade, the CD will be at its peak, and the turnover of #1s will be at record-breaking levels (1992 has twelve #1s, 2000 has forty-two!) There will be a similar slow-down in the mid-00s, as CDs die and downloads take over, and then again in the late 2010s as streaming becomes the default for how we consume music.

Anyway, after that detour into chart logistics, we mustn’t forget that this was a double-‘A’ side, and we have another song to write about. A song that is bloody hard to track down. Nothing on Spotify, and one trippy YouTube video, which leads me to assume that ‘Game Boy’ didn’t get much airtime when ‘Please Don’t Go’ was riding high in the charts. And when I listen to it, my doubts are confirmed. It’s probably the closest we’ll ever come to a happy hardcore #1. It’s an instrumental – been a while since we featured one of those – and it feels almost retro in the way it appears to be a bunch of samples strung together to make a hot mess of a tune.

I like it, more than its flip-side, for about a minute. Then it outstays its welcome. Who decides when a ‘B’-side becomes a double-‘A’? Record companies? The band? The charts themselves? Because I’d file this with ‘Girls’ School’ and ‘Anitina’ as an ‘A’-side that is much less well-known than many ‘B’-sides. But it’s there, in the record books, and we have to cover it. And it is, like I said, an aggressive style of dance that wouldn’t have otherwise featured at #1. Plus, it references the classic game console of the age in its title, which is nice.

KWS were a trio from Nottingham, named in ABBA-style as an acronym of the members’ surnames, and this was their first ever chart hit. They owed their chart fortunes to the fact that an Italian group called Double You had covered ‘Please Don’t Go’, but their record company had failed to secure UK distribution. KWS stepped in to record a remarkably similar sounding version, resulting in three years of legal action. By the time the record labels had settled up, KWS had long since ceased to be a chart concern. Their only other Top 10 hit was another remake of a much older dance tune, George McCrae’s early disco hit ‘Rock Your Baby’.