Yes, that's possible - Andy Ward (of Soul Central) was a DJ in the very early 90s when that record would no doubt have been played. A great shame that their better known “Activ 8 (Come With Me)” was not a Dance chart number 1 in the 1990s as I never got to review it, it later re-charted at Christmas in 2013 after a small campaign got it in the Top 40 at #33.

 

Looking forward to 2005 as I really enjoyed the dance music from that year, particularly a record which may be to come from Deep Dish?

 

There seems to be a lot of early dance music influence in 2005 and early 2006 in a lot of the songs that made the chart. It seems like it is almost a bit like the 90s revival in 2013-4, although not in as big a scale. Nostalgia does tend to come back in dance music every so often, hopefully we are due a revival of some old dance genre soon in the UK charts (I am guessing one of the early 00s ones like vocal trance, funky house or UK garage) after future bass becomes tired.

 

Maybe the Deep Dish one will be dance number 1 on the thread soon.....

Edited March 8, 20178 yr by The Wise Sultan

That woman in the thumbnail will be in music video infamy as a woman who took her pants off in the video.

That woman in the thumbnail will be in music video infamy as a woman who took her pants off in the video.

 

:mellow: I don't really know how the music channels got away with showing some of these videos tbh, I am guessing they were edited from the versions currently on youtube for TV play.

 

 

Edited March 8, 20178 yr by The Wise Sultan

Owner of A Lonely Heart that was quite dodgy looking back now.

it's interesting to see the common over-sexualisation in dance videos from the 2000's, any idea why this was so prominent in dance videos - especially house and trance songs? :D

it's interesting to see the common over-sexualisation in dance videos from the 2000's, any idea why this was so prominent in dance videos - especially house and trance songs? :D

the video to 'Call On Me' was incredibly popular, so much that just about every dance hit for the next few years since tried to out-do it with the sexiness.

 

of course 'Call On Me' wasn't the first sexualised dance video but that was the peak of it.

Somebody To Love, Pretty Green Eyes were amongst the first if I remember correctly.

The first one was Satisfaction I would say and the most recent one I remember seeing is So Freakin Tight - quite appropriate as SFT imo is musically in many ways rather like a tropical Studio B - I See Girls with the sexualised lyrical theme, hip hop influence for the vocal and being fast and bass heavy with an emphasis on the drop.

Edited March 8, 20178 yr by The Wise Sultan

I was sixteen at the time and hated it, it was like they didn't think we'd enjoy the songs unless they put a ton of OMG HOT CHICKS in the video and then we'd all rush out and buy the track solely for that reason. Didn't help that the CD single cover would normally be a still image from the video and have the words "INCLUDES THE VIDEO!!" in huge letters on the cover, as if that was all that mattered. 'Satisfaction' definitely started it off but Call On Me is when the floodgates really truly opened.

 

I think commercial dance music had to change its direction to survive during this time, as media attention had moved away from Ibiza, 'superstar DJs' etc (which arguably reached peak interest around 1999-2000) and more towards the British indie scene. So you had bright, colourful CGI cartoon videos to appeal to kids (The Opera Song, Fly On The Wings Of Love, Object Of My Desire etc) and the Call On Me/Out of Touch type female model videos for teens to ogle at on music telly. Remember we're still before the Youtube age here, and something that was seen as a way of boosting music sales was the DVD single, basically the video on a DVD for about a fiver - I think Call On Me was the highest-selling DVD single ever at the time for obvious reasons!

 

EDIT: Another thing really obvious that I missed - this was still in the early days of legal downloads and before they were added to the official chart. Illegal mp3s by now were massive and the music industry was losing a ton of money because of them. Create a memorable video, stick it on a CD or DVD single and heavily promote it, and you'll get less people downloading and more people buying, especially in those days when internet video was nowhere near as high-quality as a DVD!

 

What this meant was that the song often felt secondary to the video, hence the huge amount of laziness that followed with random DJs selecting any old sample, sticking a beat over it and filming some models driving in cars/throwing pillows at each other/cavorting around photocopiers etc to get the video airplay. What dance music needed were some big names to get on board - possibly from the United States - to put their vocals on a dance track to really get some major global hits, but at this point America were still totally doing their own thing and ignoring European dance trends. For now, anyway...

 

Lots of songs in this thread since I last posted and will try to catch up later!

Edited March 8, 20178 yr by BillyH

I See Girls was another music video in that ilk. Basically just a group of women with huge breasts running around.

 

But there were some really great tracks around back then, 2003-2006 produced some great dance tunes.

I liked the 80s remixes in themselves rather than the video. They are lively and uplifting, true they are not.up to the standard of The Opera Song or whatever, but they were basically like the Galantis of its time, and were more intended to be on the lighthearted side of the dance spectrum. I do prefer them to the likes of Wish You Were Mine, The Party or Easy Love in 2015 as the 2015 looped house tracks didn't have the vibrancy of the 80s remixes to me. Most of the 80s remixes were decently produced I thought and I like the atmospheric fade outs on them.

 

Not all 80s remixes had the sexualised videos too, So Much Love To Give doesn't and it made top 10 and Fading Like A Flower didn't and went top 20, these two show it wasn't just about the videos. Falling Stars is not that sexualised either compared to most of them.

 

80s remixes were just a trend, like the Clubland eurotrance that had gone before it. With every trend there is some laziness as any song has to fit the current dance trend to have the best chance of becoming a hit, that continues today with the future bass Chainsmokers type songs and the tropical house ones which usually all have pitched chopped vocals in the drop.

 

The quality though in the mid 00s of course lay with some of the actual songs rather than the remixes like Lola's Theme and Strings Of Life (Stronger On My Own), the debut Axwell and the two Freemasons ones etc. I would say.

I See Girls was another music video in that ilk. Basically just a group of women with huge breasts running around.

 

But there were some really great tracks around back then, 2003-2006 produced some great dance tunes.

 

Yes 2002-2006 has a lot of great dance tunes. I like how vibrant and lively the dance tracks are between these years and the uplfting vocals too. By late 2006 things go downhill for me when electro arrives and I just find it very emotionless compared to trance and funky house, also the vocals aren't as good either. Also vocals in general get a bit poppy for me on dance tracks in 2007.

Ok, 4 page catchup...

 

Babycakes - God. :P First heard this at my cousin's house the week it came out and thought it was just some local pirate radio DJs having a laugh or something. Got back home that night and found out the damn thing was #1. Did NOT know it beat 'Can't Stand Me Now' to #1!! I know this is a dance thread, but one of the greatest indie anthems of the noughties lost #1 to THAT? Up there with Vienna vs. Shaddup Your Face, Common People vs Unchained Melody and an infamous May 2005 #1 that'll probably be in this thread soon!

 

Call On Me - Admittedly liked this a lot as it sounded different (at the time), as mentioned the production's awesome (that beat sounded HUGE back then!) and it did deserve it's #1 status. I don't revisit it that much nowadays but it was refreshing to hear a genuinely good sounding dance track at #1.

 

Out of the other tracks during CoM's run, 'I See You Baby' was ok but got overplayed to death from those damn Renault Megane adverts that were on all the time, 'Slash Dot Dash' was about the last decent thing Fatboy Slim did until Eat Sleep Rave Repeat came along (and even that was thanks to someone else's remix), 'Flashdance' was AWESOME and didn't leave my bloody head for months, 'Do You Know' is a bit of an insult to one of the greatest dance tracks of the 90s, 'Drop The Pressure' I preferred more in its 'Doctor' mashup a year later, 'You Won't Forget About Me' is one of the greatest tracks Dannii's ever made and deserves way more recognition (and that video - wow!!), 'Pump It Up' was all kinds of hilariously brilliant, and Eyeopener's 'Hungry Eyes' will always be one of my alltime guilty pleasures - awesome Eurodance track with a memorable CGI video The Box loved!

 

The Weekend - #7 seems amazingly low for this as it didn't seem to be off telly and radio for months, another one I did enjoy at the time but compared to some of the tracks we've seen earlier on in the noughties there's no contest, for me we're nowhere near at the heights scaled during 2000-03 by now.

 

Out of Touch - I think this was the last looped house track I genuinely liked before the floodgates opened in early '05 (well, maybe one in early 2006 I'll happily still bop along to as well), another that got tons of airplay right into the New Year...hence its bizarre chart run for the time as it kept selling steadily well into January!

I remember my bafflement when I got a second hand copy of Now 60 a couple years later, and 'Out of Touch' starts playing...with a full female vocal track?! Not a mix I remember at all, the video as linked earlier in this thread is the one I remember playing on both TV and radio. Seems odd that Now 60 would include the 'wrong' version, unless I missed it completely at the time.

 

Brief break to share a couple tracks I really liked around this time that failed to go top 40. Brad Carter's house masterpiece 'Morning Always Comes Too Soon', which only seems to be in its full mix form on Youtube but there was a much shorter radio edit:

 

 

And Public Domain's 'Love U More', cover of the old 90s Sunscreen hit that blew my mind when Radio 1 blasted it out one late night/early morning over Christmas '04:

 

 

Into 2005...

 

Object of My Desire - Ok, yeah, ADORED this - felt so refreshing to hear something gloriously cheesy and high-energy after too many dance tracks taking themselves a bit too seriously at the time. By now I was lurking on a forum called CoolClarity (basically the precursor of this forum) and remember being proper chuffed when the initial midweeks had it safely top ten! Maybe one of the most obscure top ten hits of the decade today - took me ages to track down as iTunes didn't have the proper version for years - but I still love it.

 

Strings of Life - This I remember a fair few people predicting as a #1 hit, and being a bit surprised when it didn't even make top 5 - I certainly heard it a ton of times over that winter so I'm surprised it didn't chart higher. As much of a fan I am of the early house music it's inspired by, I never really took to this, too poppy for my tastes.

 

'When The Dawn Breaks' on the other hand I loved, as I think I've mentioned it earlier on this thread. Hugely evocative of that winter for me and deserved a much higher chart placing.

felt so refreshing to hear something gloriously cheesy and high-energy after too many dance tracks taking themselves a bit too seriously at the time

I don't think many dance tracks took themselves very seriously during the mid 00s, certainly not compared to 2013-17 deep house/tropical house/future bass (which is probably why I am not a fan of 10's dance compared to 00's dance)

 

As much of a fan I am of the early house music it's inspired by, I never really took to this, too poppy for my tastes.

 

Strings Of Life I certainly don't find very poppy (at least contemporary poppy) compared to a lot of the dance tracks that were doing well in the charts in 2007.

Brief break to share a couple tracks I really liked around this time that failed to go top 40.

 

Haven't heard of these two tracks before! Will have to listen to them later!

 

There were some great dance tunes in the top 40 imo during the time of the next dance number 1 (which is 4 weeks) from a variety of genres, including some making top 10. Early 2005 had a lot of dance tunes making top 20 compared to the rest of the year (a bit like what happened in 2003).

 

 

For the next dance number one, Lenny's finger is on the (new reply) button!

For the next dance number one, Lenny's finger is on the (new reply) button!

You're such a Sugababe

You're such a Sugababe

 

Do you not get the lyrical reference to our next dance number 1? :lol:

 

Can't believe the two artists in our next track didn't go top 40 for their follow up 10 years later....which was my favourite song of 2015 too, largely because of the retro influence in it!

 

I absolutely LOVE the song you are talking about, it is one of my favourite songs ever and one of the signature songs of 00s in my opinion.

Don't hold back.