One of my favourite dance genres other than rave and trance is gabber/happy hardcore, a genre that was massive around Germany and the Netherlands in the mid-late 1990s, and even as close as Ireland and far away as Australia where it had a few chart successes. In the UK, its success was mostly confined to Scotland and the North of England, with the Scottish Singles Charts from that era showing some strong-selling examples but not enough across the rest of the country to chart really high - the likes of jungle and drum & bass had a much bigger stronghold closer to London and more of the media attention to help it do well.

 

For a brief time in 1995-96, there was a minor push for the genre in the UK, and what I'm fairly sure was the first happy hardcore track to break the top 40 was Mark'Oh's 'Tears Don't Lie', a major European #1 over the previous winter and reached #24 here in May 1995. The distinctive melody is best known from Johnny Mathis's Christmas #1 'When A Child Is Born', itself based on an old Italian tune.

 

 

After a few hits from the likes of Scooter and WestBam later that year, the genre peaked in success in early 1996 with the release of Technohead's 'I Wanna Be A Hippy', which gained lots of attention for its controversial "stoned on marijuana" lyrics, a memorable Top of the Pops performance and concerned letters from viewers asking what the hell they'd just heard read out on BBC's Points of View. It shot up to number 6 in the UK charts.

 

 

More songs followed from Technohead, Scooter, Interactive and spin-off group the Party Animals through 1996, but after that it retreated back to mainland Europe. Its only appearance I can think of since was a random week in late 2002, when Nakatomi's 'Children of the Night' - a major happy hardcore release which became a club favourite for years - had a late re-release six years after charting at number 149, and this time did much better, just making the top 40 at #31. Randomly I was in Stratford-upon-Avon on a warm summer's day in 2014, and this was blasting out the speakers at a nearby mini-festival which was nice if random to hear :P

 

 

Any other examples of the genre? Wish it was more well-known in this country!

Nakatomi is legit my fave of this genre, it’s such a banger! It was actually the QFX Remix that charted in 2002 but the original 1996 version is the best.

Even though I love this sort of music I don’t really know many tracks at all! I guess I was exposed more to the shift to the Clubland side of things from the early 00s. Looking forward to hopefully some discoveries in this thread!

 

I vaguely remember Wigan Pier being the hotspot for this scene if I recall correctly.

 

 

 

 

Bumping a thread on the subject of the happy hardcore dance genre, as I want some recommendations please (can be from any era not just the 90’s). :music:

More songs followed from Technohead, Scooter, Interactive and spin-off group the Party Animals through 1996

 

Yes this is great from Scooter, just so much energy to it, their follow up Back In The UK just isn't as good for me, still good though.