The production on The Logical Song :wub:

Mad'house - Like A Prayer

 

 

Date 17th Aug 2002

4 Weeks

Official Chart Run 76-76-85-76-3-5-7-8-11-15-30-33-41-52-54 (15 weeks)

 

 

Now we have a tech house cover of a classic Madonna song. Our second tech house song of the countdown after Black Legend's You See The Trouble With Me, which as we will see has a strong connection to this song.

 

The story of this one is very much like what we saw with True Love Never Dies earlier in the thread.

 

In March 1989, Madonna released her iconic song 'Like A Prayer'. In June 2000, as we have seen on this thread, Black Legend released the tune 'You See The Trouble With Me' which reached number 1.

 

In early 2002, an internet mashup between the two started to gain underground popularity.

 

 

Which led to a French/dutch production group called Mad'house (whose entire output would be turn out to be house music covers of Madonna songs, hence the name) to produce their own version. I cannot determine any difference with the Madonna - Black Legend version apart from the vocal, but I am sure other Buzzjackers may enlighten me to how this version is an improvement on the original mashup other than it being a single edit that could be played on the radio...... :lol:

 

Anyway the Mad'house version was a big hit across Europe (number 1 in Austria, Germany and Ireland, number 2 in Switzerland and Belgium, number 3 in the UK, number 5 in France and number 18 in Denmark and Sweden).

 

Mad'house released an album, Absolutely Mad, and from that album, Holiday, a funky house version of the Madonna song with ever so slightly autotuned cover vocals :lol: and actually containing some remarkably similar sounding pairs of synths to 'Make Luv' before it was actually made.

 

A personal note, I remember this version a lot from the time (which I liked and also thought it was Madonna singing), then I forgot about it. Over the coming years, whenever I would hear Madonna's Like A Prayer, I would sing to myself the beats between the vocals that are on the Mad'house record and I had no idea why I did this until I rediscovered the song earlier this year when I was looking at the chart archive.

 

That single cover, as well :o , highly unprofessional, easily the most unprofessional looking single cover of any song I have ever seen that isn't one of the early 2010's fake singles like the Precision Tunes one.

I much prefer this to the Black Legend one, as I find the Black Legend one too chopped up and this one flows better and is a proper song too as it is a Madonna cover.

 

However on hearing the original mashup I prefer that as it has the original, better vocal on it, and the music is almost the same anyway.

...whereas this one... :puke2:

 

Well, I think I'm pretty alone in disliking this, it seems to be an early noughties fave for many. I personally can't stand it, a cheap cash-in based on an already unneeded 'mashup' of one of the best Madonna songs ever made. Oddly passed me by completely at the time - not quite sure what happened during the summer of 2002 but I missed out on a lot of major hits, mostly only discovering them a year or two later. I might be a little warmer to it if it conjured up any fun memories from the time but instead it leaves me seriously cold, if I heard in it a club I'd just be missing the Madonna original.

 

There's one final missing link in the story above, the Black Legend beat isn't actually theres, it's a 1990 house track by DHS called

. So 'Like A Prayer' is a 2002 cover of a 2002 mashup of a 2000 remake of a 1990 song with vocals from 1989!

 

The UK received a different CD single cover than the above, it looked like this (from discogs):

 

Some songs that missed out during Elvis/Scooter/Mad'house's runs:

 

Kelly Llorenna - Tell It To My Heart [#9]

 

Cover version of some 80s song but in a eurotrance style, songs don't get any more Clubland than this.

 

Dee Dee - Forever [#12]

 

Another eurotrance song, these were quite popular between 2002-5.

 

Tim Deluxe - It Just Won't Do [#14]

 

One of those songs that feels a lot bigger than its chart peak. Big house tune.

 

Flip & Fill - Shooting Star [#3]

 

A rare top 3 hit that misses the dance chart #1, this didn't actually outsell 'True Love Never Dies' though despite outpeaking it.

 

ATC - Around The World (la la la la la) [#15]

 

I think this has been mentioned multiple times in this thread already but it entered at #15 the same week Mad'house entered at #3

 

Lasgo - Alone [#7]

 

Lasgo's follow-up to 'Something' and their final top 10 hit.

 

Milky - Just The Way You Are [#8]

 

Was just one place behind Mad'house that week, nice enough house tune.

 

--

 

and an honourable mention to a producer usually known for dance music, though he did make the top 10 with this we thought it wasn't dancey enough for the thread. It would have spent one week at #1 in the rundown if it was eligible.

 

Paul Oakenfold - Starry Eyed Surprise [#6]

That's quite a lot of shocking absentees. I was certain that Shooting Star would be in the Countdown! :o

think artists doing all those dance covers is what killed dance music in the mid 00s, hardly any original song charting :/ but I do like the Like a Prayer cover, unlike the Elvis one or the Scooter atrocity :)

think artists doing all those dance covers is what killed dance music in the mid 00s, hardly any original song charting :/ but I do like the Like a Prayer cover, unlike the Elvis one or the Scooter atrocity :)

 

There are still some good cover versions in the mid 00s, I particularly like Inaya Day's cover of the 80s song Nasty Girl and the Freemasons Watchin' is also one of my favourites (both because of the retro disco influence). But the likes of Hungry Eyes by Eyeopener is dreadful imo (because of the high pitched vocals).

 

By the way we have one of the worst Eurodance cover versions imo ever to look forward to on the thread in late 2006. :lol:

 

About those songs you popsted that missed out, I particularly like the Kelly Llorenna one (another example of a good cover version) and the Dee Dee one is very dramatic in a great way. Just The Way You Are I remember a lot too, that accent is great. ATC I remember a lot and is one of my favourites, very very catchy. Lasgo - Alone is good too.

 

Just Won't Do I never liked in full, it was over played at the time and was just really annoying. But the instrumental if I remember was used in advert for the Sun newspaper and I liked the instrumental bit from that, so i think the vocals ruin it for me.

Edited September 23, 20168 yr by TheSnake

Why it took so long to release ATC's Around The World in the UK?

 

Scooter's longetivity is baffling especially since they make the same music over and over. Dance beats and that guy shouting.

 

I don't mind Mad'House take on Like A Prayer, and their version of Holiday (that also recovered a famous mash-up with Music Sounds Better With You) was better.

Edited September 23, 20168 yr by N-S

The Mad'house song (and the mashup made before that) reminds me of 2005's D.O.N.S. remix of Pump Up The Jam, basically the same as the original but with some tech house synths and beat added. Except in Pump Up The Jam it uses the original vocal, so I prefer that one to the Mad'house one (although i still like the Mad'house one too).

 

The mashup version is also similar to

Doctor Pressure

, I think it should have been released in its Madonna vocal including form.

 

Using an actual song to put tech house beats in like the Mad'house/ D.O.N.S. and Technotronic/

Mylo/Miami Sound Machine

ones is much better I think than today's tech house which tends to just have random words said over a beat (like House Work for example).

Edited September 23, 20168 yr by TheSnake

Tons there! Thoughts:

 

Tell It To My Heart - No. :P Sorry, I love Kelly but this is a mess, yet another late 80s classic butchered.

 

Forever - Don't mind this one, only discovered it a few years back - nothing groundbreaking but a fun listen.

 

It Just Won't Do - Only #14?! This got tons of airplay at the time, enough for a top 5 hit - no idea why it underperformed so much. It's ok but the video's all kinds of erm.

 

Shooting Star - This for me is the only Flip & Fill track that I'll genuinely call fantastic, it's not theirs (a happy hardcore cover from the late 90s) but despite slowing it down it still works seriously well for me, Karen Parry does an awesome job on vocals. Saw her perform this live back in the noughties.

 

Around the World - The UK got a very slightly beefed-up 2002 mix for this, viewable

but I struggle to hear much difference. Fun and catchy dancepop and glad it eventually became a hit here after such a ridiculously long wait, sadly the same can't be said for so many other early noughties Europop classics.

 

Why it took so long to release ATC's Around The World in the UK?

 

I do think there was some kind of industry push that year to bring Eurotrance-pop to a wider UK audience, a whole load of European hits from earlier in the decade were finally given UK releases that year. Milk Inc's In My Eyes took even longer - started getting Belgian airplay at the end of 1998, peaked in both Belgium and Australian charts in 1999...finally released here in summer 2002 and went top 10, although as a new remix.

 

Alone - Again the UK mix was different, remade by LMC to sound like less of a 'Something' clone - irritatingly it doesn't seem to be on Youtube but easily found on Spotify. Love the intro but the rest of the track never really did it for me.

 

Just The Way You Are - Bores me a little sadly. I think again this suffered from too much overplay, that 'do do doo do do dodo do' feels permanently burned into my head after all the times I heard it in the noughties.

 

Starry Eyed Surprise - This seriously disappointed me at the time given that two years earlier he'd been responsible for the BRILLIANT Bullet In The Gun - hell, a few months earlier he'd released Southern Sun, and now here was this naff rap track pandering to the still dancephobic North American market. Not great and glad it wasn't included as a dance #1.

 

Speaking of Southern Sun, Oakenfold's original is great but JESUS CHRIST is the Tiesto mix a thing of beauty. Many happy warm summers days I've spent listening to this!

 

Edited September 23, 20168 yr by BillyH

I wonder will that be the only song called Forever to miss the dance thread?

Also missing out was The Prodigy's #5 'Baby's Got A Temper', but I refuse to give that its own YouTube embed (

) as it's quite awful (and not really that dancey either).

I wonder will that be the only song called Forever to miss the dance thread?

I don't know actually, but I'm sure I'd find the answer to be very entrancing.

 

(yes that was a truly terrible pun)

Also missing out was The Prodigy's #5 'Baby's Got A Temper', but I refuse to give that its own YouTube embed (

) as it's quite awful (and not really that dancey either).

 

Oh god, I was trying to forget that ever existed :puke2: Didn't appear on their Greatest Hits because Liam Howlett hates it, a seriously bad attempt at doing another Firestarter/Breathe and failing miserably - they cancelled the entire album that was in progress and started again shortly after.

 

The eventual album Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned wasn't great anyway tbh, but preferable to the horrors of BGAT.

Love all of those that missed out especially Tell It To My Heart (Kelly grabbing that solo top ten hit *.*) and Shooting Star, which was the b-side to True Love Never Dies a few months earlier bizarrely. I do love the Like A Prayer cover too, oops :lol:

N-Trance - Forever

 

 

Date14th September 2002

1 Week

Official Chart Run 6-13-29-37-43-51-67-78-72-76 (10 weeks)

 

 

Yes it was a terrible pun, DanG.

 

This song is by, by this time veteran, dance act N-Trance. This one has a few drum rolls in the buildup, drum rolls are one of the signature features of trance music. Together with this and the massive sounding trance synths there is a piano tune later in the verses and the bridge reminiscent of a piano tune that was used in a certain 2009 dance song. I am sure Buzzjackers will guess what it is. :o

 

The song features as vocalist, one of the most prominent trance vocalists of the time, Kelly Llorenna, whom we have seen before in the thread on True Love Never Dies.

 

N-Trance, like Kelly Llorenna are from Oldham, England and we formed in 1991, which means they had the word 'trance' in their name before the genre-influencing but not quite trance 1994 song Set You Free. Before this, they still had a hit Turn Up The Power, which I have just lsitened to and is mostly very nice, but has the curse of some 90s dance songs which puts me off, the rap verse that imo doesn't really go with the rest of the song.

 

They then went away from anything resembling trance into chart friendly rap led house-pop for the rest of the 90s. This included somewhat cheesy versions of Rod Stewart's Do Ya Think i'm Sexy and Ottawan's D.I.S.C.O.

 

Then near the end of 2001, Set You Free was re-released as a remixed trance Rob Searle radio edit.

 

The follow up to this was Forever, and N-Trance finally had an unremixed trance hit to befit their name. They followed this with Destiny in 2003 (reaching number 37)and sadly they haven't had a top 40 hit since.

 

I do remember Forever, I think being played in the ice skating rink when I was younger. I liked the verses then but wasn't a fan of the big trance synths, I like it all now.

 

I went with the All Around The world cover for this. For me the style of the All Around the World in the early/mid 00s covers are iconic :wub: , the record company should bring them back.

Forever is such an atmospheric song, especially with those drum rolls too, the massive sounding trance synths and Kelly Llorenna's vocal.

 

Concerning Shooting Star it is simply amazing in all the worst ways how they went from that great track to the horror that was Discoland in 2 years.

Edited September 23, 20168 yr by TheSnake

Also missing out was The Prodigy's #5 'Baby's Got A Temper', but I refuse to give that its own YouTube embed (

) as it's quite awful (and not really that dancey either).

 

Don't worry there is that eurodance cover to look forward to at the end of 2006 which is easily the worst song that is going to be posted on this thread. :puke2:

 

And danG, you say that songs don't get any more Clubland than Kelly Llorenna's Listen To my Heart, but there is that other type of Clubland in the 00s that wasn't eurotrance, the retro 80s style type like Uniting Nations (who kind of started this type of eurodance), Sunblock and later Cahill and Nicki Belle's Trippin On You and Star Pilots Heat Of The Night ;)

Edited September 23, 20168 yr by TheSnake

The follow up to this was Forever, and N-Trance finally had an unremixed trance hit to befit their name. They followed this with Destiny in 2003 (reaching number 37)and sadly they haven't had a top 40 hit since.

puts pedant's hat on.

 

actually the version that was a hit here (and is in the video) is the Voodoo & Serano remix. The original version sounds like this and is not trance