The intro to our next number one kicks in, and I’m struggling to tell if it sounds like something we’ve already met in our journey through the early 90s, or if it was simply copied into ubiquity in the years that followed…

Mr. Vain, by Culture Beat (their 1^st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 22^nd August – 19^th September 1993

On the one hand, ‘Mr. Vain’ is cheesy, throwaway Eurodance – the soundtrack to many a summer holiday in Ibiza (the 1990s is littered with dance hits that made the higher reaches of the charts in early autumn, after everyone had returned home from a fortnight in the Med). On the other, it’s an astute slice of dance-pop so of its time it could be in a museum.

It follows a tried and tested formula: one girl who sings, one boy who raps, over a throbbing beat. It’s amazing how successful this was, over and over again, between 1990 and 1994. Snap!, 2 Unlimited, Culture Beat… ‘Mr. Vain’ is a both a cheap and cheerful rehash of ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’, especially in the portentous intro, and a slightly less stupid take on ‘No Limit’, with its techno riff and juddering drum machine. It takes what was great about both those records, and creates a streamlined, optimised dance hit – perhaps the epitome of its genre.

Call him Mr Raider, Call him Mr Wrong… Away from the pulsing beat, there are lyrics that just beg to be chanted en masse. I know what I want and I want it now… A decade later, when I started going to nightclubs, this record would still get a regular spin, and girls would pick out their own personal ‘Mr. Vain’ among the strobes and the dry ice. Meanwhile, Mr. Vain responds in the rapped verses: Call me what you like, As long as you call me time and again…

I’m going to take bets on where Culture Beat were from. Place your chips…. There’s no way they were British – the thought didn’t even cross my mind, given that this is dictionary-definition Eurodance. I was tempted to go Dutch, or maybe Belgian… But no. They were a German creation, of course, from a producer with two rent-a-voices, keeping up a grand tradition that stretches all the way back to Boney M. For ‘Mr. Vain’, though, the large-lunged vocals are from a Brit – Tanya Evans – while the rap is supplied by an American – Jay Supreme.

They’d had a couple minor hits previously, but this one sent them into the stratosphere: a number one in eleven countries across Europe, setting them up for a year or so of follow-up Top 10s. In Germany their success lasted the better part of a decade, until a remake of their biggest hit, ‘Mr Vain Recall’, in 2003. Culture Beat remain a going concern, presumably touring festivals across central Europe every summer, with a completely different line-up, Evans and Supreme having left way back in 1997.