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Whilst the Lost Souls version of Set You Free is good too in its own right, it still baffles me how they can even call it a remix. It's a completely different song.
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I also worried for a second that Cotton Eye Joe had robbed Set You Free of it's deserved #1, but hurrah :D

 

Absolutely up there in my top ten fave songs of all time. My current worry is - and this will inevitably happen - that, in the near future, someone's going to give it a terrible cover/remix that will end up being more known in the next generation than the original. A bit like how You Got The Love is basically a Florence and the Machine song to anyone under the age of 20 now.

 

Whether it's 'Set You Free (Dull John Lewis acoustic ballad mix)', 'Set You Free (Underwhelming deep house mix)' or 'Set You Free (feat. Jessie J & Pitbull)' it's probably only a sad matter of time. But that original's gonna stay in my arms forever :)

Well, I'll buck the trend and say that it grates on me today although I remember thinking it was just about danceable at the time. A hint of hardcore after dance music had moved on. Think I've mentioned before how irritating it was for me to be a huge fan of rave at the age of 14 but just too young to go out and do anything about it.

 

Interesting point about the interest in Scotland though - we had a really weird taste in twee, cheesy poppy rave-lite rubbish in the early to mid 90s - QFX, Ultrasonic, Time Frequency. I hated pretty much all of it.

 

I'm guessing we won't have seen the end of N-Trance in 1995 though...

THAT song aside, I always found N-Trance to be more miss than hit. The covers were excruciating for the most part, I'd quite gladly never hear D.I.S.C.O., Paradise City, Do You Think I'm Sexy and Stayin' Alive again (and in fairness I probably won't have to, it's not like they're radio staples).

 

It amazes me that they didn't put out more originals, Forever was the only other great one and they got a top ten hit out of it, it would have been nice to see other similar releases. Tears In The Rain and Destiny were quite decent too.

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Without Set You Free they qualify as once of the worse dance bands of the 90s :o
Quite. I can't fathom why on earth they decided to go down the Clock route rather than trying to continue the quality they achieved with Set You Free. Easy money to be made at the time in disco rehashes I guess.
I also worried for a second that Cotton Eye Joe had robbed Set You Free of it's deserved #1, but hurrah :D

 

Absolutely up there in my top ten fave songs of all time. My current worry is - and this will inevitably happen - that, in the near future, someone's going to give it a terrible cover/remix that will end up being more known in the next generation than the original. A bit like how You Got The Love is basically a Florence and the Machine song to anyone under the age of 20 now.

 

Whether it's 'Set You Free (Dull John Lewis acoustic ballad mix)', 'Set You Free (Underwhelming deep house mix)' or 'Set You Free (feat. Jessie J & Pitbull)' it's probably only a sad matter of time. But that original's gonna stay in my arms forever :)

 

Cinnamon Girl did a slowed down version of it in 2011 for Matalan. It didn't do very well, but hopefully it means no one else will try.

THAT song aside, I always found N-Trance to be more miss than hit. The covers were excruciating for the most part, I'd quite gladly never hear D.I.S.C.O., Paradise City, Do You Think I'm Sexy and Stayin' Alive again (and in fairness I probably won't have to, it's not like they're radio staples).

 

It amazes me that they didn't put out more originals, Forever was the only other great one and they got a top ten hit out of it, it would have been nice to see other similar releases. Tears In The Rain and Destiny were quite decent too.

 

Electronic Pleasure was also good, but yes, it's weird that they never followed it up with similar sounding original songs. I think Kelly must've left pretty soon after its release because I don't think she featured on any of their other songs until Da Ya Think I'm Sexy IIRC.

Alex Party - Don’t Give Me Your Life

 

http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm82/TheMagicPosition86/rsz_alex_party_zpsdycpksct.png

 

Date 26th February 1995

3 Weeks

Official Chart Run 10-6-3-2-2-5-8-10-14-21-31-48-72 (13 weeks)

*Positions in red are the weeks when the track would be number 1 if just dance music was chart eligible.

 

Throughout the first half of the 90’s we have had plenty of Italian house on offer, starting and arguably dominated by Gianfranco Bortolotti, who has been mentioned plenty of times already here due to his involvement with projects such as the 49ers and Cappella. However it was Livin’ Joy producers the Visnadi brothers who dominated the middle part of the decade with their slightly more uplifting ‘handbag house’ anthems, in 1993 they worked on another project with prominent Ibizan DJ Alex Natale, whom the group Alex Party were named. These anthems were perfect for the Ibiza clubbing scene that had been growing in popularity since its birth in the late eighties - indeed 1993 debut Alex Party single “Saturday Night Party (Read My Lips)” was a huge Ibizan anthem and also crossed over to the UK charts at Christmas making #49 (as the eponoymously-titled “Alex Party (Saturday Night Party)”) with an extended Top 75 run duly following as UK club play increased, and this eventually saw it re-peak at #29 the following May.

 

“Don’t Give Me Your Life” essentially re-works the synths from the aforementioned “Read My Lips (Saturday Night Party)” (later remix and re-released again but missing the Top 20!) though it adds a new melody and vocal from the talented British singer Robin ‘Shanie’ Campbell, who wrote the lyrics to catalogue the heartache and consequent aggression she felt after a recent breakup, channelling it into a powerful dancefloor smash. The giddy and jumpy bassline making the track perfect for the clubs and it’s euphoric and melodic vocals and bridge keeping pace with the current popular eurodance sound exploited by Whigfield just 6 months earlier.

 

The track had a very successful run after debuting at #10, though the group would only have 2 further hits (“Wrap Me Up” almost a year later, #17 in November and a remix of debut “Read My Lips” which made #28 in the autumn of 1996) though this was due to another far more successful project ongoing at the time which we will be hearing from very soon..

 

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Pretty awful. I detested the squeeky synths. Awful tone of voice and the title always irritated me too.

 

:D

Early 1995 is generally my favourite dance era since around late 1991/early 1992, disc 2 of Now That's What I Call Music 30 is all kinds of incredible. Next mega-era is mid-1996 (although 'mid' is used quite broadly as generally that whole year's pretty damn incredible) and then from the spring of 1999 the classics are unstoppable.

 

DGMYL is great, bizarrely 'Wrap Me Up' was the bigger hit in a few countries though. Wasn't there a random remix/remake of this in the late noughties? Wikipedia's coming up blank but I'm sure I remember it on the music channels around that brief craze for remixing old 90s hits was around.

I love "Don't Give Me Your Life". So anthemic. At least it has more life than a certain #2 from an original act that year.

Alex Party - Don't Give Me Your Life :wub: :wub: :wub:

 

One of my all-time-favourite dance tracks. I agree it's ao anthemic haha, Even today I could listen to it a couple of times back-to-back :lol:

The version of Don't Give Me Your Life that led the UK release is the "Classic Alex Party Mix". But this "Original Mix" is the version I'm the most familiar with. Granted it has a random and useless rapping part in but at least it's squeeky-synth free.

 

Edited by N-S

Early 1995 is generally my favourite dance era since around late 1991/early 1992, disc 2 of Now That's What I Call Music 30 is all kinds of incredible. Next mega-era is mid-1996 (although 'mid' is used quite broadly as generally that whole year's pretty damn incredible) and then from the spring of 1999 the classics are unstoppable.

 

DGMYL is great, bizarrely 'Wrap Me Up' was the bigger hit in a few countries though. Wasn't there a random remix/remake of this in the late noughties? Wikipedia's coming up blank but I'm sure I remember it on the music channels around that brief craze for remixing old 90s hits was around.

 

DGMYL was re-released just credited to Shanie, but Wrap Me Up no.

I was such a chart music fan back in the 90s, I think I have nearly all of these on CD single somewhere (Cotton Eyed Joe aside which even I realised was terrible!)

 

Set You Free is an odd one, sometimes I love it but other times I think it's aged really awfully.

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Set You Free hasn't ages at all. Cotton Eyed Joe is a whole lot better than I remembered.

The Outhere Brothers - Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)

 

http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm82/TheMagicPosition86/rsz_outhere_brothers_zpsf3sbaso0.png

 

Date 19th March 1995

6 Weeks

Official Chart Run 9-2-1-2-2-2-2-5-9-13-19-25-36-56-69 (15 weeks)

*Positions in red are the weeks when the track would be number 1 if just dance music was chart eligible.

 

Since the early 60s shocking and outrageous lyrics have, if not well disguised, been guaranteed to attain notoriety through the inevitable press coverage that follows, and during the following years had been invading the charts with ever-increasing frequency. In the previous decade radio had tried to ban records with controversial or sexually explicit lyrics, particularly that which was provided by the publicly funded BBC, however that was often counterproductive (see: Frankie Goes To Hollywood). A compromise - the radio edit - was born, this eventually leading to the labelling of all on-sale explicit content in 1990 with the now widely recognisable black-and-white warning label. Usually a radio edit would discreetly replace the offending word(s) with either a new 'family friendly' phrase or a sound effect, however “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)”, originally a pretty gratuitously graphic ode to oral sex, was changed beyond recognition with the child friendly Townhouse edit replacing much of the offending lyrics and leading to the strange situation where the single in the charts was not the song that people were hearing in the clubs and buying the record for.

 

The Outhere Brothers were the Chicago duo of rapper Keith Mayberry (Malik) and producer Lamar Mahone (Hula) who were brought together by DJ Jazzy Jeff in 1987. Mahone produced DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince’s “Summertime” which had hit #8 in the summer of ’91, with Mayberry helping to co-write the rap on Fresh Prince’s 1993 UK #1 “Boom! Shake The Room”. “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” was the follow-up to LMFAO-esque bro-rap “Pass The Toilet Paper” which was released in 1993 but failed to find a commercial footing, though it sets the tone for the duo’s output. Its combination of hip-hop/house beats, and Mayberry’s hoarse and rather range-limited rap was to find them success however with Top 10 placings in Belgium and the Netherlands during the winter of 1994, and these imports frequently found their way into the UK chart lower rungs as the explicit OHB Club Version spread through the clubs; though the group had found a somewhat younger audience too with their playful rapping and catchy beats and controversial lyrics providing hushed sniggering in the classrooms and playgrounds of the UK. By March 1995 the single was hyped enough to make an impressive debut, and subsequently debuted at 9, before rising to 1 and remaining highly placed for some time due to the controversy that predictably soon followed.

 

The lyrical content of “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” was brought up in Parliament by Worcester MP Peter Luff who bemoaned ‘such filth suggests that the record industry is not policing its output effectively’ and the album from which it was taken 1 Polish 2 Biscuits & A Fish Sandwich was re-recorded after the UK government threatened to prosecute the group and label under the Obscene Publications Act; the last time the act had been used for a pop record was against Essex anarchists The Crass’ 1983 political protest record “How Does It Feel To Be The Mother Of A Thousand Dead?” - which was directed at Margaret Thatcher. There’ll be more from Malik and Hula later in the year...

 

This confused me for years.

 

Not having any recollection of this and their other one (which inevitably will also be here in a few months) at the time, I first heard about it around 2003, and yet the only version I could find was that Townhouse edit. Not realising it was virtually a different song, I couldn't work out what on earth was so controversial about what appeared so harmless-sounding - were people furious about the word "Wiggle" or something? Was there some filthy undertone to the words "Don't stop moving baby, all you do is drive me crazy" that I was completely missing? I remember listening quite intently trying to decipher any supposedly controversial lyrics I was missing!

 

Wasn't for a few more years I realised I was listening to the wrong version, obviously the Now 30 mix is also censored.

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