In a year packed with dance hits, here’s one of the best…

It Feels So Good, by Sonique (her 1^st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 28^th May – 18^th June 2000

The strings; the husky, ominous vocals; the garage beat. It’s of its time, but also one of those hits that transcends its moment. Maybe it’s a sign of how pop music has lost its forward movement in the early years of this century, but ‘It Feels So Good’ sounds like it could be a hit from 2025. Plus, lines like You give me such a vibe, It’s totally bona fide… feel very much like how the young folk speak these days.

In my mind, I always imagined the chorus was autotuned, especially the It’s you I’m always thinking of… line. But listening now, I don’t think it is. It’s just very distinctively sung, in a very high key, oddly far back in Sonique’s throat. Hey, every hit needs a hook, even one that makes it sound like you’ve got a bad cold.

As with many dance tracks, my attention starts to wander in the second verse, which is more of the same. But I do like the lasering synths that become more prominent as the song progresses. Having said that it sounds very much of the year 2000, it turns out that ‘It Feels So Good’ was almost two years old by the time it made #1, having reached #24 on its original release in December 1998. Interestingly, given that the US is usually quite resistant to European EDM, it was the song’s success stateside (where it eventually made #8) that prompted the re-release.

Sonia Marina Clarke, AKA Sonique, had been active in the music biz since the early eighties, when she had formed a reggae band, and had released her debut solo single in 1985. She had also worked with S’Express, though joined after ‘Theme from S’Express’ had topped the charts. She had two other Top 10s – ‘Sky’ and ‘I Put a Spell on You’ – which tread much the same territory as this single without being as good. She still records, and DJs, and played Glastonbury just last year.

‘It Feels So Good’ is also noteworthy due to being the joint longest-running number one of 2000, with a grand total of three weeks at the top. I feel I should also note how darn basic the title is. ‘It Feels So Good’ rivals ‘I Love You’ (#1 for Cliff and the Shadows in 1961, chart fans) for simplicity. Just drop the ‘It’, I think, and things become much cooler. But what do I know? It’s not as if proper sentence structure hampered this record’s success…