dance music

940. ‘Heaven’, by DJ Sammy & Yanou ft. Do

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Here we, here we, here we fucking go!

Heaven, by DJ Sammy & Yanou ft. Do (their 1st and only #1s)

1 week, 3rd – 10th November 2002

That’s the sort of thing people used to shout when the beat dropped on this next number one, in the cheap nightclubs I was frequenting in 2002, where they didn’t check IDs and the carpet oozed decades’ worth of alcohol onto your shiny school shoes (no trainers allowed – they did have some standards).

This is cheap and nasty trance pop. Ned music, if you’re from where I’m from. Faceless Euro DJs with sledgehammer originals, and remixes of old hits. Think Ultrabeat, Basshunter, Cascada and, daddies of them all, SCOOOOO-TER! They did the job, when you were young and off your face on Smirnoff Ice, but for dance music in general I’d say it was a step backwards.

Compare this to the Eurodance of a couple years earlier: Fragma, Modjo, ATB. Their offerings were a lot subtler, a bit more thoughtful. For much of the 2010s though, as far as I could tell, most dance tunes sounded like DJ Sammy. And one on hand I do like the heavy, deliberate beats that trance gives you. It lends itself to lasers and dry ice, and listening to this now I am starting to get slightly nostalgic. But it also gets repetitive.

‘Heaven’ was originally a hit for Bryan Adams in 1985, when it had given him his first US #1 (and had made #38 in the UK). It provided a similar breakthrough for DJ Sammy, a Spaniard who had been active since the mid-90s. His version of ‘Heaven’ also impressively made the Billboard Top 10, a chart usually immune to the charms of European dance music. Sammy had further success with versions of Don Henley’s ‘Boys of Summer’ and Annie Lennox’s ‘Why’, and he continues to record and to DJ.

The credits for this song feel very 21st century. Imagine telling someone in 1952 that fifty years later number one hits would be recorded by acts named DJ Sammy & Yanou ft. Do. Yanou was the German producer who collaborated on this track, and Do a Dutch singer who provided the vocals. Neither have troubled the UK charts again, though Do was fairly successful in her homeland and Yanou went on to work extensively with the aforementioned Cascada.

Another thing I remember about this song was the very popular ‘candlelight mix’: a stripped back, piano version without the thumping beat, which probably soundtracked many a teenage fumble among my schoolfriends. Like I said, listening to this now is making me slightly nostalgic. I have to remind myself that I thought this was crap at the time, and that it’s still fairly crap now. But therein lies the pernicious danger of nostalgia, making even the bad, the cheap, and the tacky, appear good.

930. ‘A Little Less Conversation’, by Elvis Vs JXL

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No song conjures up the year 2002 more than this tune, that year’s song of the summer.

A Little Less Conversation, by Elvis (his 18th of twenty-one #1s) Vs. JXL

4 weeks, from 16th June – 14th July 2002

It sounds curious, and potentially disastrous: a little known Dutch DJ remixing a little known Elvis track from one of his long-forgotten late sixties movies. But, through some strange alchemy, the original’s brassy swagger mixes nicely with JXL’s big, accessible beats, and creates a great pop song.

What remains is Elvis-enough for people who were around when he was alive, and modern enough for those who weren’t. It helps that few people probably knew the original, but also that it was recorded in 1968, around the time of the comeback special, when what is now Elvis’s most familiar pop culture persona was born. Elvis sounds like Elvis, deep voiced and lip curled, and the added echo makes it sound like he’s coming live from the other side. All that’s missing is a thank you very much to finish.

JXL (officially Junkie XL, though that was presumably shortened to keep things family-friendly) was Tom Holkenberg, a DJ active since the late-eighties. He had worked as a producer with several punk and metal bands, as well as becoming big on the rave scene and touring with the Prodigy. None of which sounds like the guy who came up with this super-mild, catchy, chart-friendly hit. As much as I like the record, I’d sooner call it cheesy than cool, and do wonder if Norman Cook considered lining up any plagiarism suits against all the Fatboy Slim style drum-breaks and goofy fills.

The original ‘A Little Less Conversation’ had featured on the ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ soundtrack in 2001, presumably bringing it to the attention of Nike. They then commissioned JXL to remix the song for an advert to tie in with the 2002 World Cup, in which the world’s best footballers competed in a first-goal-wins tournament in a cage. Maybe I’m of the perfect age to get swept up in the nostalgia of it, but watching that advert again, much like hearing this song, feels so ‘2002’ that it hurts.

The single followed a few months after the advert, and was sitting at #1 as Brazil won a record fifth world title. Equally record-breaking was the fact that, after a twenty-five year tie, Elvis moved ahead of the Beatles and onto eighteen UK #1 singles. It kicked off a bit of a renaissance for the King, and a collection of his number one hits (including this remix) became a huge seller that autumn. I’d credit this single, and the album, for getting me into Elvis, and enjoying his music to this day. In 2003 another Elvis remix, this time of ‘Rubberneckin’’ by Paul Oakenfold, made #5.

JXL meanwhile, while not quite a one-hit wonder, never made it higher than #56 without Elvis’s help. Still, he was the first person to be allowed by Elvis’s estate to remix one of his songs, which is an honour of sorts. And he is responsible for introducing many youngsters (me included) to The King, and to one of the greatest ever rhyming couplets in chart-topping history. A little less conversation, A little more action please, All this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning me… Thank you very much, indeed.

874. ‘Lady (Hear Me Tonight)’, by Modjo

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After a record-breaking twelve single-week number ones in a row, when neither Kylie, Eminem, Robbie Williams, nor Madonna herself, could hold on for more than seven days, we have a multi-week chart-topper.

Lady (Hear Me Tonight), by Modjo (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 10th – 24th September 2000

And of course the act to finally hold firm at the top are one that nobody had ever heard of before, that didn’t have pent-up demand and huge first day sales which quickly petered out. Modjo were a French house duo and, with no previous hits become, I think, at least the sixth Random Dance act of the year to make #1.

And it also makes sense that this song was the one to spend more than a week on top – actually increasing in sales in its second week, which was practically unheard of in 2000 – because it is a mash up of all the era’s hot sounds. There’s a Chic sample, fitting in perfectly with the nu-disco hits that we’ve heard recently, but presented through a chilled Balearic filter, more suited for the poolside bar than the club. The BPMs are low, but the blissed out vibes are high…

We’ve had plenty of hard-hitting Italian, German and Dutch dance tracks over the years, but very few from France. In fact, Modjo’s success made them only the fourth French act ever to have a UK number one, after Serge Gainsbourg, Charles Aznavour, and Mr. Oizo. And not that I want to fall into the trap of national stereotyping, but there’s something very effortlessly cool about this song. A certain… Well, if only there was a French term for a quality that can’t be described or named easily.

Maybe it’s because only the five minute long album version is available on Spotify, but I’m beginning to think that effortless cool can only get you so far. Eventually things become repetitive, which is my eternal problem with dance music. I will give a shout out, though, to the jazz hands flourish that comes along every so often, a camp little nod to the Moulin Rouge among all the modernity, which also feels very French. And to the lyrics, which in the best Europop tradition feel quite ‘second language learner’: Lady, Hear me tonight, ‘Cause this feeling, Is just so right… But they work, and are very easy to remember.

The Year 2000 is really trying its best to make me re-evaluate my feelings on dance music. On the one hand each recent dance #1 has been interesting, fun and, most importantly, not Westlife. But at the same time, the best I can say for the majority of them is that they are diverting. Most of them don’t land hard enough between my ears for me to truly love them (I’d say ‘Groovejet’ is the one dance song from this year that I really, really like). Oh, and speaking of Westlife…

871. ‘Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)’, by Spiller ft. Sophie Ellis-Bextor

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The chart week beginning Sunday 20th August 2000 was supposed to be a Spice one-two. Victoria Beckham was to replace Mel C at the top of the charts with her (and Dane Bowers, and True Steppers) garage-influenced single ‘Out of Your Mind’. But as we all know by now, the path of true chart success never does run smooth…

Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love), by Spiller ft. Sophie Ellis-Bextor (their 1st and only #1s)

1 week, from 20th – 27th August 2000

For along came this incredibly catchy piece of nu-disco, from an Italian DJ and the lead singer of a little known indie band, to throw a groovy spanner in the works. Spiller, the DJ, had created the track in 1999, and named it after the Miami nightclub where he had first given it a spin, Groovejet. The backbone of the track is a sample of Carol William’s 1976 track ‘Love Is You’, and the vocals/lyrics were added by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, lead singer of Theaudience, and – once again involved in the unlikeliest of number ones – Mud’s Rob Davis.

The reasons why this unlikely dance track got caught up in one of the most famous chart races of all time with Posh Spice are various (and I might explore them in a future post). But I’d suggest that the most important reason is very simple: ‘Groovejet’ is the much better song.

It’s an effortlessly chic track, one that blends perfectly the need to be cool with the need to be accessible. It balances an authentic disco beat, some very ‘Year 2000’ production chops and swishes, and Ellis-Bextor’s beautifully detached vocals. It works as a chillout, by-the-pool track as much as it works as a floor-filler. It is retro, it is modern. It is disco, it is house. (Wikipedia lists it as ‘handbag house’, which is now my new favourite genre of all time…) It is, and this may be pure recency bias but who cares, the year’s best chart-topper.

My biggest problem with dance music is that it can sometimes get repetitive. Spiller avoids this by filling his track with lots of little touches to keep things busy, such as the strings in the old school middle-eight, and the hand drums at the end, not to mention the just silly enough aeroplane sound effect.

Back to release-week, then, where Victoria Beckham (and Dane Bowers and True Steppers) were announced to be leading the race midweek. Both women did promo, with the battle billed as ‘Posh Vs Posher’. In the end, Spiller and Sophie won out by 20,000 copies, and secured the highest weekly sales of the year so far. That was as good as it got for Spiller, who bookended his biggest smash with two #40 hits. But it set Sophie Ellis-Bextor up for much more solo success, including six Top 10 hits across the noughties (seven, if we count the two times that classic ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ has peaked, agonisingly, in the runners-up position…) Meanwhile, this was as close as Victoria Beckham got to a solo #1, and she remains the only Spice Girl not to manage one.

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.

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.