the version that “Cha Cha Slide” which reached number one was a Eurodance-type recasting but there was also the alternate mix (in this case that apparent “Part 2”) that prioritises minimalistic, 80s hip-house beats.
“Gym Tonic” is an obvious Popular precedent but a closer, even less illustrious one might be fellow Chicagoans the Outhere Brothers due to the similarity with the “Don’t Stop” situation – i.e.
Yet others use a slower, more stripped-back arrangement I’ve also seen described as “Part 2”, which would seem to be the version on the actual 2000 single, except not labelled as such). So I assume it’s a fresh remix, but some ostensible uploads of the 2000 version to YouTube use this version. The UK hit exemplifies – in an admittedly basic way* – the housier side of AATW’s output in this period just fine, with Casper’s tutorial sounding like a sample. (Incidentally, this is where I get muddled.
I’m not sure why it took several years for it to spread to Europe, though, but by 2004 it had been snapped up by Universal to become the UK’s second All Around the World number one. It even made the Billboard Hot 100 shortly afterwards. If my chronology is right – it has a confusing history – he wrote it that year, then first recorded it in 1998 (this version appears to just be – of all things – Plastic Dreams, with his instructions jotted live) and then re-recorded it in 2000. But nope, it’s yet another number one with origins in 1996. It’s a record that almost refuses any life beyond the functional and communal, the most defiantly critic-proof of Number Ones. It’s too prescriptive (and therefore too corny) to work inside a DJ mix, too brutally one-dimensional for non-dancefloor listening. “Cha Cha Slide” has no pelvic thrusts or pushed pineapples or conga lines – it simply is what it is.Īs a non-dancer – at least not to this level of coordination – I can’t say whether the Slide is easy or hard, enjoyable to pull off or banal. There have been other instructional dance records in the charts – by 1985, Spitting Image could show up with a piss-take of them and be well understood – but they all have moments of excess, commands that are saucy or surreal giving dancers permission to make a fool of themselves.
#Oops upside your head 1990s free
It’s almost hook free – “Cha Cha Slide” just drops away into pure stepping where a chorus might otherwise be.Īs well as its simplicity, the other thing I notice about “Cha Cha Slide” is its austerity – this isn’t a record that goes out of its way to create ‘fun’ beyond the basic joy of dancing.
“Cha Cha Slide” snatches away this figleaf of mystery – the song is the dance, the words are the routine, it is no less and not much more than a step aerobics routine with set music. Which makes DJ Casper’s “Cha Cha Slide” either the ultimate dance hit or a weird outlier. It’s like the world’s easiest initiation ceremony. A bespoke dance, learned by seeing then doing, is the physical manifestation of the joyful communion pop creates simply by lots of different people loving the same thing at the same moment. You can’t usually work out the moves just by listening – there’s no clue in the grooves of Whigfield’s “Saturday Night” that the song has a special dance, but the dance is inextricable from the love so many people have for it. The pleasure of so much pop lies in those new moves, the routines which attach themselves to songs by design or accident. “Land Of 1000 Dances” is not a census, it’s a promise – that as long as there is music and there are dancefloors, fresh dances will be found.
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