europop

909. ‘Hey Baby (Uuh, Aah)’, by DJ Ötzi

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

Christmas is still months away, so what’s with all the novelties? Hot on the heels of Bob the Builder, Oktoberfest comes to the UK singles chart…

Hey Baby (Uhh, Ahh), by DJ Ötzi (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 16th – 23rd September 2001

God, it’s hard to exaggerate how much this record was done to death. Mentioning Christmas feels relevant, because this was played at every festive party in 2001 (and 2002, and 2003…) The murdering of a sixties classic, the cheap synths, the crowd participation – added to the title, just in case you were in any doubt – the key change… The term ‘Eurotrash’ doesn’t begin to do it justice.

But it’s somehow… enjoyable? There’s something endearing about this, and I think it is down to DJ Ötzi’s complete commitment to his craft. He sells it, bawling out every line as if he is coming live, four beers in, from the big tent in Munich. I don’t think it has occurred to him that this could be considered a novelty record, and he’d be mortally offended if you as much as suggested it.

Ötzi is Austrian, while his beanie hat and bleached goatee (which he still sports today, aged fifty-four) have been burned into my memory for the past twenty-four years. Two interesting facts about him: he named himself after Ötzi the Iceman, a 3,500 year-old frozen mummy uncovered in the Alps (Europe’s oldest known human). And in 2002 he suffered a severe form of hearing loss (add your own jokes here…) He remains active though, especially beloved in his homeland, where he’s enjoyed thirteen Top 10 albums!

Bruce Channel’s original ‘Hey! Baby’ had been a #2 in 1962, and had also come back into the public consciousness thanks to the ‘Dirty Dancing’ soundtrack in the late-eighties. Ötzi had his wicked way with another sixties hit as a follow-up, ‘Do Wah Diddy’ making #9 later in the year. He enjoyed a third Top 10 with a remixed version of ‘Hey Baby’ for the 2002 World Cup, before graciously leaving the British charts alone.

Interestingly, demand for ‘Hey Baby’ was such that it had bounced around the lower reaches of the chart for seven weeks thanks to import copies from Europe. This meant that it had an unprecedented, if slightly false, forty-four place climb to the top when finally given a proper release. I also wonder if it’s telling that this was the best-selling record during the week of the 9/11 attacks. Were the public looking for light relief after digesting such horrific images? I couldn’t say. The fact that this and Bob the Builder were the two biggest records at the time does feel slightly incongruous…

If we add Blue’s ‘Too Close’ into the equation, this is, I believe, the first time that three consecutive covers have topped the charts. Also, and this is something I’ve been feeling for a while now, the cheapness of 2001’s chart-toppers is starting to wear thin. These two back-to-back novelties, Atomic Kitten, Shaggy, Hear’Say, Geri’s ‘It’s Raining Men’… I never expected to say this, but the year 2000 now feels like a high watermark for the time, with some high quality dance and pop #1s, and not too much cheese. Now though, we’ve reverted back to 1998-99 standard, when Vengaboys, B*Witched, Eiffel 65 and the like ruled the day.

Having said all this, our next chart-topper is both classy and era-defining, blowing all this novelty nonsense out of the water…

A low-res version of the video:

Better quality version (audio-wise I mean, the song’s still terrible…):

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

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

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

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

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.