I also adore the interpolation it got for Don't Wanna Go Home which is a bit random (like @Ironheade said). It is just a timeless beat.
The 90's US One-Hit Wonders Rate: WINNER REVEALED - Goodbye, farewell and amen
- Thread starter Ironheade
- Start date
He/Him
It is a classic but I agree - I'd take Show Me Love over it!
2014
Staff member
To you. Groove Is In The Heart has been a contender for the top 3 since the beginning for me!
he/him
Reason #36884 why I love Sweden:
“Hitlåtens historia” is a television documentary program focused on the genesis of and reception to popular songs from around the world.
“Show Me Love” was featured in Series 7.
Unfortunately on the SVT website it’s only available for our Swedish friends, but someone was kind enough to upload a dodgy clip to YouTube. Featuring Swedish and English audio:
“Hitlåtens historia” is a television documentary program focused on the genesis of and reception to popular songs from around the world.
“Show Me Love” was featured in Series 7.
Unfortunately on the SVT website it’s only available for our Swedish friends, but someone was kind enough to upload a dodgy clip to YouTube. Featuring Swedish and English audio:
he/him
That might be but I had different vision as someone who lived as a teenager during the time of much of this rate. Maybe I forgot what songs were more iconic than others.
he/him
This performance on Dutch TV .... did not start out very promisingly. But she got there eventually.
It also was a bit disappointing to watch Janice Robinson pretend that being mentored by the wife of Robbie Williams was in any way appropriate for someone who previously had a UK #1 hit, but at least she video chatted with Robin for the package.
It also was a bit disappointing to watch Janice Robinson pretend that being mentored by the wife of Robbie Williams was in any way appropriate for someone who previously had a UK #1 hit, but at least she video chatted with Robin for the package.
Precisely. Watch it leave next tho...
Robin’s is a great dance track but if dance music isn’t your thing then it’s not so appealing. However ‘Groove...’ has always gotten fans regardless of the particular musical tribe you aligned yourself with...
I really, really can't get my head round this at all. Other than Lovefool, which I'm still expecting to win, I'd call this the least surprising of the tracks still in. It's universal. I've never seen it not fill a dancefloor.
he/him
You say this and then I keep reading this:
I mean those songs were universal in the U.S. during this period. Like prime examples of American One Hit Wonders in the 90s. Yet I've seen people calling for an exit for twenty places now.
she/her
I suspect this is all very dependent on what age everyone was at the time.
Well, this is PopJustice after all, not the US in the 90s! That's why I'm surprised
he/him
I know, but I'm still stating why I'm surprised.
she/her
Does Todd In The Shadows lurk this thread? He just released a video about the worthy winner of this rate!
Winner? We'll have to see about that!
I can officially inform you, however, that "You Get What You Give" is not #6. Which will be revealed tomorrow, by the way...
For a super Meta connection, I linked to the same video in my 'mid-rate write-up' in my Mandy Moore rate today, because I referenced her cover of 'Someday We'll Know' in the content. I was literally editing the post & just wanted to fire up something in the background while I did it... only to have my brain melted by hearing Todd make the the same random connection I made in my write-up.
Stranger Things!
Stranger Things!
Last edited:
So, I've got three tens left in this. Unfortunately, today is the day we lose one of them.
Oh yeah, and Ironheade has definitely been known to smoke... on stage, that is...
6. GROOVE IS IN THE HEART
Average score: 8.497
Highest scores: 1 x 11 (@Ganache ); 17 x 10 (@Ironheade , @Hudweiser , @2014 , @soratami , @WowWowWowWow , @Ana Raquel , @ModeRed , @yuuurei , @unnameable , @Seventeen Days , @chanex , @GimmeWork , @Hurricane Drunk , @4Roses , @AshleyKerwin , @Remorque , @Blond )
Lowest scores: 1 x 1 (@əʊæ)
Chart positions: #4 Hot 100, #5 Radio Songs, #1 Dance Club Songs, #28 Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
Year-End Hot 100: #91 (1991)
Who? Oh yeah, them...
Well. Here is a shock. A dancefloor bop, custom-engineered to appeal to forum gays, with some awesome retro-cool graphics and a should-have-been Big Pop Girl at the ront of them, by a band well connected to issues that the Pop SocialJustice crowd should eat up... and it doesn't even make the top 5?! Frankly, I was expecting “Groove Is In the Heart” to be at least in the final two, if not the outright winner. But, as our own dear Auntie Beryl said, this is “the most bizarre rate I've ever been in”... and why not just add a little more weirdness on the top of that? With that said, let us venture over to the good ol' Empire City, and find out just where groove is.
Hint: it's the heart.
The story of Deee-Lite begins with Kierin Magenta Kirby: A.K.A., “The Lady Miss Kier”. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, she moved to New York in 1983 and got involved in the post-disco dance music scene there. And would a woman who goes by “The Lady Miss Kier” be a shy and retiring type? No, she would not. In fact, she met the second member of Deee-Lite when she was hired to custom make a glittery blue space suit and a pair of silver platform boots for the producer of an acid house act named Shazork, which was fronted by two drag queens named “Lady Bunny” and “Sister Dimension” who pretended to be space aliens. (Man. I don't know what kind of drugs the patrons of gay clubs were taking in 1986, but I want some of them.) The producer in question was Supa DJ Dmitry (born Dmitry Brill), a Ukrainian-born son of two classical musicians – and something of a child prodigy, who had apparently been enrolled in an experimental music programme at college at the age of nine! Anyway, he had emigrated to the States in 1981, and established a reputation as a club DJ quite quickly, splitting the difference between two sounds that he loved by playing in both house music and hip-hop venues. The two of them quickly hit it off, and began performing together as Deee-Lite in 1986, drawing huge crowds in the same venues where Dmitry had already made a name for himself.
I gotta start going to 80's gay clubs more.
One of the regular attendees at those concerts was Jungle DJ Towa Tei (Dong-hwa Chung), a Korean-Japanese amateur turntablist and sampling expert who had come to the US to study graphic design in 1987. He didn't play any instruments, but he was a serious record collector and music geek with a gift for ferreting through his collection to find obscure samples, and the plunderphonics tracks on a demo tape he passed to them in 1988 impressed the two founding members enough that they invited him to join the group. His eclectic sampling choices where what finally give them the edge they'd been looking for, securing their retro 60's and 70's vibe that combined psychedelic graphics and campy disco-revival sounds with modern dance music. They've been compared to a dance music version of the B-52's, including by our old friend Todd in the Shadows, thanks to their camp vibes and wacky party atmosphere, and I think that's pretty fair to say. One could also make note of where Deee-Lite's fanbase came from, giving them a much wider appeal: despite all three members of Deee-Lite being straight (Kier and Dmitry were even married for a while... but we will get to that a bit later, trust me), they were always welcome in the New York underground gay clubs that played house music in that era, and drew what Rolling Stone described as “vivid, multi-racial, pan-sexual crowds”. So, when they got signed to Elektra Records to put out their first album World Clique in 1990, they were already getting off on the good foot. And the huge hit single would only solidify it.
Dig.
“Groove Is In the Heart” was a song that dated all the way back to Deee-Lite's early club days, and was first performed live by them in 1989. It wasn't quite the “Groove Is In the Heart” we've all come to know and love back then, though. No, that version really took shape when Kier reached out to legendary funk bassist Bootsy Collins to appear on the record, and apparently he loved it so much that he introduced her to the rest of the P-Funk collective as well; several of them made appearances on World Clique, including former James Brown sideman Maceo Parker, who played the saxophone on “Groove Is In the Heart”. Incidentally, it is a common misconception that Bootsy actually plays the bass on the song, given that he does so in the music video, but he does not: the bassline is a sample from Herbie Hancock's “Bring Down the Birds”, while the drum track, and surprisingly enough, the basis of a slide-whistle breakdown, is lifted from Vernon Burch's “Get Up”. And given their connections to the hip-hop scene, both by themselves and with P-Funk's then-recent “get in good with the kids” effort of working directly with the rappers who so often sampled their work, they were also enable to enlist none other than the almighty Q-Tip as a guest for the lead single! (Amusingly enough, that almost made me consider disqualifying Deee-Lite at the stage where I was drawing up the list, considering that it contains two artists who are very much not one-hit wonders on their own... but then I got some perspective, remembered what forum I was doing this on, and decided that I couldn't very well have a comprehensive survey of 90's one-hit wonders and not include it! Glad I came to my senses now, aren't you?)
I always assumed "pompatus of love" just meant his penis, honestly.
Ah, but before we move on to my review of the song... we had better talk about what happened to “Groove Is In the Heart” on the UK charts, where it controversially reached number two in September 1990. You see, the single had sold exactly the same number of copies in its highest-selling week as a reissue of the Steve Miller Band's “The Joker”, which had come on the back of the song's appearance in a Levi's advert. (For our Yankee cousins, songs becoming hits in the UK based on being used by Levi's was a whole Thing in the 90's. Remember Stiltskin's “Inside”? Babylon Zoo's “Spaceman”? Aww yis.) Anyway, the OCC broke the tie and put “The Joker” at number one, on the basis of a rule instituted in the 80's that, in the event of a tie, the single that had had the greater increase in sales from the previous week would come out on top. (For the record, “The Joker” handily outsold “Groove Is In the Heart” for the rest of its chart run.) Anyway, WEA complained, and the OCC ended up scrapping that rule after its one and only use here, deciding once again that joint positions on the UK charts were allowed. The Lady Miss Kier, ha impact.
So what do I think?
TEN.
Right from the first filtered and phaser-warped snatches of funk guitar, perfectly complimented by the chopped vocal sample (I'M GOING TO DANCE AND HAVE SOME FUN) immediately giving way to the schmoooovest bassline in the rate, you can tell that “Groove Is In the Heart” is one of those songs that is going to put a massive cheesy grin on your face almost instantly. Despite how tight and catchy and well-constructed of a song it is, based around the airy and beautifully judged melodic economy of the bassline, what I love most about it is that it almost sounds like Deee-Lite could have been making it up as they went along. Scratched up “A-A-A-A-A-OW!” vocal samples appear at almost random intervals, verses never quite transition in the place you would expect them to while the band seems to stumble on the chorus by accident every time, they use frickin' slide whistles as a pre-chorus hook, there's a part where the beat just drops out and they all make random noises before Maceo Parker's iconic sax solo... and yet, it all hangs together beautifully, simultaneously making you wonder “where the hell did they come up with this?!” and marvel at the creativity compared to everything else in 1990's dance music landscape. It's basically a house music abstract painting, just as colourful and crazy as the video's graphics. Going back to the B-52's for a bit, one other thing I really love here is the use of crowd noise to fill out the verses, kind of like “Love Shack”: it makes the song sound like a big, noisy and hella fun party that all the listeners are invited to, only helped out by Bootsy's random yelped interjections as the emcee of this weird psychedelic void (ASTRONOMICAL!). I swear, the guy basically just sounds like some stoner at the party who got hold of a microphone and started talking about whatever over the beat, but man, he makes it sound so good. Even Q-Tip's rap has something of the messy thrown-together atmosphere about it, combining his standard laid-back cool with the effortlessly hyped-up energy of an 80's party rapper, where the intent was not so much to spit some serious bars as to just sound fly over the beat, and he certainly does that. And of course, the whole thing is held together by Kier's immediate star-making vocal performance: the lady is just so charismatic, you can't help but love her. I don't know what “We're gonna groove to Horton Hears a Who” is meant to imply, and nor do I care, because whatever she instructs you to do, you will do. Yeah, I can't help it, “Groove Is In the Heart” is 100% BopJustice and probably the most fun song in the entire rate. Everybody who gave this a low score and wanted it to go... come on, do your hearts just not have any groove in them or something?
Where Are They Now?™
Deee-Lite actually didn't do so badly with the following singles from World Clique compared to some – well enough, in fact, that Billboard has declared them their 55th most successful dance artist of all time! The second single “The Power of Love” followed “Groove Is In the Heart” to the top of the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart, and made a respectable enough showing on the Hot 100 by going to #47; they got another #1 dance single with “Good Beat” as well, but that one didn't cross over. By the end of its chart run, World Clique had won gold certification. They really ought to have done better though, if you ask me. Sure, the other two singles didn't exactly have the same uniqueness and spark that “Groove Is In the Heart” did, but they were still pretty damn solid 90's house jams, as is most of the album as a matter of fact. Part of this could be because, as I've said in this rate before, the then-current entrance of house music into the pop mainstream of the US at the time was quite short-lived, and mostly gone by 1993, barring influences on tracks from big pop artists, or the occasional outlier; besides that, Deee-Lite's campy-colourful image and goofy retro-70's personalities might (unfairly) have tagged them as a one-off novelty act to the general public. And creative differences were also beginning to arise within Deee-Lite at this time: Towa Tei did not join Kier, Dmitry and the nine-piece live band who went out on the world tour for World Clique, instead staying home in New York to work on gathering samples and working on the initial musical construction for their second album, Infinity Within, as well as taking the opportunity to do some work with his idol, Ryuichi Sakamoto. His musical influences were different from the dance music background of the other two members from the beginning, as he was a lover of genres like jazz and bossa nova, which didn't fit in with the disco and hip-hop influences of Kier and Dmitry's dance music backgrounds, or the 60's psychedelic aesthetic that Deee-Lite had had from the beginning. Right there, the seeds were sown for the group's downfall.
I don't know what Towa Tei is running from, better that I don't ask probably. But Dmitry seems rather blase about it...
The atmosphere must have been buoyant as they returned to work on their second album Infinity Within in 1992, though. Bootsy Collins and Maceo Parker returned on a number of tracks (the former playing guitar and bass this time), and in lieu of Q-Tip's guest feature, Arrested Development and Michael Franti got some slots. And the latter of those two names are important here, because they show Infinity Within for what it is: a much more politically charged album than World Clique and its simple message of inclusion and uplift, focusing instead on specific issues. That, right there, is probably what turned off a lot of the more casual fans who had come to them with “Groove Is In the Heart”. Let's be honest. Nobody wants to listen to a house album to hear songs about the ozone layer, the importance of voting, and safe sex. And it doesn't help that the way Deee-Lite approached subjects like this was proper corny, either. Y'know, some people can take heavy political subject matter and integrate it into danceable pop music as if it was nothing... but Deee-Lite were no Chumbawamba there, put it that way. Nevertheless, I think they very well could have continued to have some success in the house music scene, considering that they were well-respected and had a unique style that stuck out from a pack of anonymous DJs, and indeed the lead single “Runaway” did top the Hot Dance Club Songs chart, but it didn't cross over to the Hot 100, and neither did any of the other singles from Infinity Within. To make matters worse, the group didn't get any tour funding from Warner in support of the album. Record labels: always dicks, still dicks.
All those cheetahs didn't die for this.
So when it came time to produce their third album, 1994's Dewdrops in the Garden, the writing was already on the wall for Deee-Lite. During the pre-production of the album, Towa Tei abruptly left, reasoning that the creative split within the group was too large for him to surmount; he was also busy working with J-pop star Nokko as a producer, and on preparing his own solo debut album Future Listening!. When it arrived, the record proved to be quite a curious beast – as well as backing off on the political lyrics and returning to the “uplifting” style of World Clique, it has more influences from trance and acid techno than Deee-Lite's previous work, and even some odd trip-hop sounding parts. It's quite an interesting listen, and definitely shows that they had more in the tank than “Groove Is In the Heart” in case the previous album had cast any doubts. Unfortunately, despite scoring another two dance number ones with “Call Me” and “Bring Me Your Love” and being better received by their fans than Infinity Within, sales for Dewdrops in the Garden were even worse, with the album failing to breach the top half of the Billboard 200. Kier and Dmitry, along with new member DJ Ani, did their best to hold Deee-Lite together, keeping Towa Tei in the fold by letting him remix “Call Me”, and taking the group out on the road for almost a year, largely out of their own pockets due to the fact that record labels were hardly supporting them at all any more. Sadly, there was one very important thing that they couldn't hold together. I didn't mention this earlier, but Towa Tei had also cited that the atmosphere in the group was getting “toxic” as a reason for leaving – and it was soon to manifest in the form of Dmitry and Kier's marriage, which had always been volatile to begin with, breaking down for good in 1995. And with the end of that relationship came the end of Deee-Lite. Ah well. Not everybody can be Fleetwood Mac and have the exes all working with each other... which, come to think of it, is probably for the best. Thanks to that, and Towa Tei's continuing dislike of live performances and preference for staying at home to work on his computer, the chances of them ever reuniting is effectively zero.
So who wants to bet that Sophie has been looking at this cover art quite a lot?
All three members of Deee-Lite have stayed active as DJ's, though. Towa Tei has been by far the most prolific, releasing albums regularly right up to the present day after leaving America for rural Nagano prefecture, both under his own name and the pseudonym Sweet Robots Against the Machine. He's continued to collaborate with Ryuichi Sakamoto and the rest of Yellow Magic Orchestra, along with big-name Japanese artists like Verbal, Pizzicato Five and Satoshi Tomiie; what he is perhaps most famous for, though, is his prominence in the “Shibuya-kei” microgenre of J-pop, a mixture of sample-heavy electronic music with influences from jazz, the 90's lounge music revival, and forgotten 60's and 70's pop and psychedelic records. It's pretty interesting stuff, if you'd like to check any of his solo work out. Dmitry has been much quieter, only releasing one DJ mix album in 1999 and a collaboration with Julee Cruise in 2011, but he still tours the international club circuit and does some remixes here and there. As for Kier, she has also been doing that since the late 90's after she began learning the technical side of production, as well as doing some collaborations with her old friends in the P-funk collective, but despite performing some new songs live, she has never released a solo record. She's more active these days in the fashion world, with some publications even referring to her as one of music's greatest style icons, as well as in her long-standing work as a human rights activist. And of course “Groove Is In the Heart” has remained one of the defining 90's dance jams, appearing in all kinds of movies and TV shows... including, just last year, an episode of Big Mouth that was entirely based around the group's music in order to deliver a message in support of Planned Parenthood (for whom Kier is a longtime advocate). I'm going to be honest, I sat through about half an episode of Big Mouth before I turned it off – to me, the art style is just fucking ugly in the same way that old-school Klasky-Csupo used to be – but if you like it, well, more power to you, I guess.
Also the talking vagina kind of made me feel like I had been added to a list of some sort.
Oh yeah, and I would be remiss not to share this before moving onto the commentary. In 2000, Sega released a rhythm game called Space Channel 5 on the Dreamcast... and three years later, Kier sued them with a claim that the lead character Ulala was an unauthorised use of her likeness. Kier claimed that Sega had offered her $16,000 to license “Groove Is In the Heart” for advertisements, and that she had turned them down and refused them permission to use her look, but that they had done it anyway. The case dragged on for three years, but in the eventuality, Sega were able to prove in court that the game had been conceived and given its Japanese release in 1999 (a year before Kier claimed they had approached her), and that Ulala was sufficiently different enough to constitute a “transformative work”. Kier ended up having to pay the defendant's legal fees under California law – a total of $608,000. Ah, that's where hubris gets you, I suppose. But Ulala totally does look like her though.
OVER TO THE PEANUT GALLERY
How do you say, “Deee-sgusting”?
əʊæ (1): Makes me feel as if i had flies nested in my ears.
Empty Shoebox (4): I've never liked this but I now remember just how awful the penny whistles are.
DJHazey (4): For some reason I thought this was more of a eurodance song than a disco revival track and not really a good one at that.
Untouchable Ace (5.1): This one's hard to rate it's a little bit cringe and I don’t find it deee-lite-ful.
Ooh la la la la-la-la-la-la
Auntie Beryl (9.5): Difficult to see this not being top 5 in this rate. I have removed half a mark to give the other songs a fighting chance.
CasuallyCrazed (8.5): An absolute corker of a song. The only downside is its been overplayed to death at every wedding, barmitzvah and gay club for the last 20 years.
Filippa (7): I love this song until it gets so annoying that I have to stop listening.
iheartpoptarts (9): The random Dr. Seuss reference is a highlight.
Andy French (8): Lowkey pressed this was their defining single because it's not my favorite, but it did get me into their incredible back catalogue so there's that!
pop3blow2 (9): One the first really wonky dance pop songs I remember really being into. This came out when I was in middle school & I was already a pretty hardcore pop nerd. I thought it was really creative then & still do. It holds up to me as sort of a classic & ahead of its time.
DominoDancing (9): What a pleasure this song is. A classic for a reason.
Sprockrooster (8): I am whistling all day now and I do not mind!
berserkboi (9.8): Classic!
unnameable (10): As St Julia of Stiles said, “Gotta endorphinise!” Not quite as good as ‘a good beat’ but still fantastic after all these years.
GimmeWork (10): Complete CLASSIC!
Seventeen Days (10): BAWP and a half, this is eternally a dance classic. They even got Bootsy Collins to play on this track, which automatically gives them tons of cool points.
Hudweiser (10): Such an anthem. Throughout my teens I never knew what it was called because I thought she was singing "Groovers in the Hall"...
Blond (10): One of the ultimate gay ass 90s dance tracks. It’s got such a nice hip-hop feel to it and it’s not as in-your-face as the likes of Rhythm Is A Dancer or Show Me Love, but it’s just as likely to make you lose your shit in a club.
yuuurei (10): I loved this song sooo much in like 8th grade, around 2001, after I taped it off the radio. I even had a whole dance routine to it. It's still a fun bop!
WowWowWowWow (10): If we ever have a Popjustice meetup and karaoke is involved, I will be performing this song, and I won’t need accompaniment because I know all of the words, even the rap. It would be my succotash wish to do this.
AshleyKerwin (10): Totally bonkers. Queen of house.
2014 (10): Iconic bop! Soooooooo catchy and just a classic really.
4Roses (10): An anthem, you can't but help but get up and dance with ass off.
chanex (10): We're going to dance and have some fun. Enough said except that in college everyone clapped along to the chorus and I felt like a star when I knew all the words to the Q Tip rap they cut from some of the single mixes at least in the US which would always crush me. Deee-Lite is so so underrated, especially lyrically. 1 2 3 bluughughughughgh
ModeRed (10): A solid 10 if ever there was one! - that beat, that vocal which is instantly memorable… nearly my 11.
Oh yeah, and Ironheade has definitely been known to smoke... on stage, that is...
6. GROOVE IS IN THE HEART
Average score: 8.497
Highest scores: 1 x 11 (@Ganache ); 17 x 10 (@Ironheade , @Hudweiser , @2014 , @soratami , @WowWowWowWow , @Ana Raquel , @ModeRed , @yuuurei , @unnameable , @Seventeen Days , @chanex , @GimmeWork , @Hurricane Drunk , @4Roses , @AshleyKerwin , @Remorque , @Blond )
Lowest scores: 1 x 1 (@əʊæ)
Chart positions: #4 Hot 100, #5 Radio Songs, #1 Dance Club Songs, #28 Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
Year-End Hot 100: #91 (1991)
Who? Oh yeah, them...
Well. Here is a shock. A dancefloor bop, custom-engineered to appeal to forum gays, with some awesome retro-cool graphics and a should-have-been Big Pop Girl at the ront of them, by a band well connected to issues that the Pop SocialJustice crowd should eat up... and it doesn't even make the top 5?! Frankly, I was expecting “Groove Is In the Heart” to be at least in the final two, if not the outright winner. But, as our own dear Auntie Beryl said, this is “the most bizarre rate I've ever been in”... and why not just add a little more weirdness on the top of that? With that said, let us venture over to the good ol' Empire City, and find out just where groove is.
Hint: it's the heart.
The story of Deee-Lite begins with Kierin Magenta Kirby: A.K.A., “The Lady Miss Kier”. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, she moved to New York in 1983 and got involved in the post-disco dance music scene there. And would a woman who goes by “The Lady Miss Kier” be a shy and retiring type? No, she would not. In fact, she met the second member of Deee-Lite when she was hired to custom make a glittery blue space suit and a pair of silver platform boots for the producer of an acid house act named Shazork, which was fronted by two drag queens named “Lady Bunny” and “Sister Dimension” who pretended to be space aliens. (Man. I don't know what kind of drugs the patrons of gay clubs were taking in 1986, but I want some of them.) The producer in question was Supa DJ Dmitry (born Dmitry Brill), a Ukrainian-born son of two classical musicians – and something of a child prodigy, who had apparently been enrolled in an experimental music programme at college at the age of nine! Anyway, he had emigrated to the States in 1981, and established a reputation as a club DJ quite quickly, splitting the difference between two sounds that he loved by playing in both house music and hip-hop venues. The two of them quickly hit it off, and began performing together as Deee-Lite in 1986, drawing huge crowds in the same venues where Dmitry had already made a name for himself.
I gotta start going to 80's gay clubs more.
One of the regular attendees at those concerts was Jungle DJ Towa Tei (Dong-hwa Chung), a Korean-Japanese amateur turntablist and sampling expert who had come to the US to study graphic design in 1987. He didn't play any instruments, but he was a serious record collector and music geek with a gift for ferreting through his collection to find obscure samples, and the plunderphonics tracks on a demo tape he passed to them in 1988 impressed the two founding members enough that they invited him to join the group. His eclectic sampling choices where what finally give them the edge they'd been looking for, securing their retro 60's and 70's vibe that combined psychedelic graphics and campy disco-revival sounds with modern dance music. They've been compared to a dance music version of the B-52's, including by our old friend Todd in the Shadows, thanks to their camp vibes and wacky party atmosphere, and I think that's pretty fair to say. One could also make note of where Deee-Lite's fanbase came from, giving them a much wider appeal: despite all three members of Deee-Lite being straight (Kier and Dmitry were even married for a while... but we will get to that a bit later, trust me), they were always welcome in the New York underground gay clubs that played house music in that era, and drew what Rolling Stone described as “vivid, multi-racial, pan-sexual crowds”. So, when they got signed to Elektra Records to put out their first album World Clique in 1990, they were already getting off on the good foot. And the huge hit single would only solidify it.
Dig.
“Groove Is In the Heart” was a song that dated all the way back to Deee-Lite's early club days, and was first performed live by them in 1989. It wasn't quite the “Groove Is In the Heart” we've all come to know and love back then, though. No, that version really took shape when Kier reached out to legendary funk bassist Bootsy Collins to appear on the record, and apparently he loved it so much that he introduced her to the rest of the P-Funk collective as well; several of them made appearances on World Clique, including former James Brown sideman Maceo Parker, who played the saxophone on “Groove Is In the Heart”. Incidentally, it is a common misconception that Bootsy actually plays the bass on the song, given that he does so in the music video, but he does not: the bassline is a sample from Herbie Hancock's “Bring Down the Birds”, while the drum track, and surprisingly enough, the basis of a slide-whistle breakdown, is lifted from Vernon Burch's “Get Up”. And given their connections to the hip-hop scene, both by themselves and with P-Funk's then-recent “get in good with the kids” effort of working directly with the rappers who so often sampled their work, they were also enable to enlist none other than the almighty Q-Tip as a guest for the lead single! (Amusingly enough, that almost made me consider disqualifying Deee-Lite at the stage where I was drawing up the list, considering that it contains two artists who are very much not one-hit wonders on their own... but then I got some perspective, remembered what forum I was doing this on, and decided that I couldn't very well have a comprehensive survey of 90's one-hit wonders and not include it! Glad I came to my senses now, aren't you?)
I always assumed "pompatus of love" just meant his penis, honestly.
Ah, but before we move on to my review of the song... we had better talk about what happened to “Groove Is In the Heart” on the UK charts, where it controversially reached number two in September 1990. You see, the single had sold exactly the same number of copies in its highest-selling week as a reissue of the Steve Miller Band's “The Joker”, which had come on the back of the song's appearance in a Levi's advert. (For our Yankee cousins, songs becoming hits in the UK based on being used by Levi's was a whole Thing in the 90's. Remember Stiltskin's “Inside”? Babylon Zoo's “Spaceman”? Aww yis.) Anyway, the OCC broke the tie and put “The Joker” at number one, on the basis of a rule instituted in the 80's that, in the event of a tie, the single that had had the greater increase in sales from the previous week would come out on top. (For the record, “The Joker” handily outsold “Groove Is In the Heart” for the rest of its chart run.) Anyway, WEA complained, and the OCC ended up scrapping that rule after its one and only use here, deciding once again that joint positions on the UK charts were allowed. The Lady Miss Kier, ha impact.
So what do I think?
TEN.
Right from the first filtered and phaser-warped snatches of funk guitar, perfectly complimented by the chopped vocal sample (I'M GOING TO DANCE AND HAVE SOME FUN) immediately giving way to the schmoooovest bassline in the rate, you can tell that “Groove Is In the Heart” is one of those songs that is going to put a massive cheesy grin on your face almost instantly. Despite how tight and catchy and well-constructed of a song it is, based around the airy and beautifully judged melodic economy of the bassline, what I love most about it is that it almost sounds like Deee-Lite could have been making it up as they went along. Scratched up “A-A-A-A-A-OW!” vocal samples appear at almost random intervals, verses never quite transition in the place you would expect them to while the band seems to stumble on the chorus by accident every time, they use frickin' slide whistles as a pre-chorus hook, there's a part where the beat just drops out and they all make random noises before Maceo Parker's iconic sax solo... and yet, it all hangs together beautifully, simultaneously making you wonder “where the hell did they come up with this?!” and marvel at the creativity compared to everything else in 1990's dance music landscape. It's basically a house music abstract painting, just as colourful and crazy as the video's graphics. Going back to the B-52's for a bit, one other thing I really love here is the use of crowd noise to fill out the verses, kind of like “Love Shack”: it makes the song sound like a big, noisy and hella fun party that all the listeners are invited to, only helped out by Bootsy's random yelped interjections as the emcee of this weird psychedelic void (ASTRONOMICAL!). I swear, the guy basically just sounds like some stoner at the party who got hold of a microphone and started talking about whatever over the beat, but man, he makes it sound so good. Even Q-Tip's rap has something of the messy thrown-together atmosphere about it, combining his standard laid-back cool with the effortlessly hyped-up energy of an 80's party rapper, where the intent was not so much to spit some serious bars as to just sound fly over the beat, and he certainly does that. And of course, the whole thing is held together by Kier's immediate star-making vocal performance: the lady is just so charismatic, you can't help but love her. I don't know what “We're gonna groove to Horton Hears a Who” is meant to imply, and nor do I care, because whatever she instructs you to do, you will do. Yeah, I can't help it, “Groove Is In the Heart” is 100% BopJustice and probably the most fun song in the entire rate. Everybody who gave this a low score and wanted it to go... come on, do your hearts just not have any groove in them or something?
Where Are They Now?™
Deee-Lite actually didn't do so badly with the following singles from World Clique compared to some – well enough, in fact, that Billboard has declared them their 55th most successful dance artist of all time! The second single “The Power of Love” followed “Groove Is In the Heart” to the top of the Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart, and made a respectable enough showing on the Hot 100 by going to #47; they got another #1 dance single with “Good Beat” as well, but that one didn't cross over. By the end of its chart run, World Clique had won gold certification. They really ought to have done better though, if you ask me. Sure, the other two singles didn't exactly have the same uniqueness and spark that “Groove Is In the Heart” did, but they were still pretty damn solid 90's house jams, as is most of the album as a matter of fact. Part of this could be because, as I've said in this rate before, the then-current entrance of house music into the pop mainstream of the US at the time was quite short-lived, and mostly gone by 1993, barring influences on tracks from big pop artists, or the occasional outlier; besides that, Deee-Lite's campy-colourful image and goofy retro-70's personalities might (unfairly) have tagged them as a one-off novelty act to the general public. And creative differences were also beginning to arise within Deee-Lite at this time: Towa Tei did not join Kier, Dmitry and the nine-piece live band who went out on the world tour for World Clique, instead staying home in New York to work on gathering samples and working on the initial musical construction for their second album, Infinity Within, as well as taking the opportunity to do some work with his idol, Ryuichi Sakamoto. His musical influences were different from the dance music background of the other two members from the beginning, as he was a lover of genres like jazz and bossa nova, which didn't fit in with the disco and hip-hop influences of Kier and Dmitry's dance music backgrounds, or the 60's psychedelic aesthetic that Deee-Lite had had from the beginning. Right there, the seeds were sown for the group's downfall.
I don't know what Towa Tei is running from, better that I don't ask probably. But Dmitry seems rather blase about it...
The atmosphere must have been buoyant as they returned to work on their second album Infinity Within in 1992, though. Bootsy Collins and Maceo Parker returned on a number of tracks (the former playing guitar and bass this time), and in lieu of Q-Tip's guest feature, Arrested Development and Michael Franti got some slots. And the latter of those two names are important here, because they show Infinity Within for what it is: a much more politically charged album than World Clique and its simple message of inclusion and uplift, focusing instead on specific issues. That, right there, is probably what turned off a lot of the more casual fans who had come to them with “Groove Is In the Heart”. Let's be honest. Nobody wants to listen to a house album to hear songs about the ozone layer, the importance of voting, and safe sex. And it doesn't help that the way Deee-Lite approached subjects like this was proper corny, either. Y'know, some people can take heavy political subject matter and integrate it into danceable pop music as if it was nothing... but Deee-Lite were no Chumbawamba there, put it that way. Nevertheless, I think they very well could have continued to have some success in the house music scene, considering that they were well-respected and had a unique style that stuck out from a pack of anonymous DJs, and indeed the lead single “Runaway” did top the Hot Dance Club Songs chart, but it didn't cross over to the Hot 100, and neither did any of the other singles from Infinity Within. To make matters worse, the group didn't get any tour funding from Warner in support of the album. Record labels: always dicks, still dicks.
All those cheetahs didn't die for this.
So when it came time to produce their third album, 1994's Dewdrops in the Garden, the writing was already on the wall for Deee-Lite. During the pre-production of the album, Towa Tei abruptly left, reasoning that the creative split within the group was too large for him to surmount; he was also busy working with J-pop star Nokko as a producer, and on preparing his own solo debut album Future Listening!. When it arrived, the record proved to be quite a curious beast – as well as backing off on the political lyrics and returning to the “uplifting” style of World Clique, it has more influences from trance and acid techno than Deee-Lite's previous work, and even some odd trip-hop sounding parts. It's quite an interesting listen, and definitely shows that they had more in the tank than “Groove Is In the Heart” in case the previous album had cast any doubts. Unfortunately, despite scoring another two dance number ones with “Call Me” and “Bring Me Your Love” and being better received by their fans than Infinity Within, sales for Dewdrops in the Garden were even worse, with the album failing to breach the top half of the Billboard 200. Kier and Dmitry, along with new member DJ Ani, did their best to hold Deee-Lite together, keeping Towa Tei in the fold by letting him remix “Call Me”, and taking the group out on the road for almost a year, largely out of their own pockets due to the fact that record labels were hardly supporting them at all any more. Sadly, there was one very important thing that they couldn't hold together. I didn't mention this earlier, but Towa Tei had also cited that the atmosphere in the group was getting “toxic” as a reason for leaving – and it was soon to manifest in the form of Dmitry and Kier's marriage, which had always been volatile to begin with, breaking down for good in 1995. And with the end of that relationship came the end of Deee-Lite. Ah well. Not everybody can be Fleetwood Mac and have the exes all working with each other... which, come to think of it, is probably for the best. Thanks to that, and Towa Tei's continuing dislike of live performances and preference for staying at home to work on his computer, the chances of them ever reuniting is effectively zero.
So who wants to bet that Sophie has been looking at this cover art quite a lot?
All three members of Deee-Lite have stayed active as DJ's, though. Towa Tei has been by far the most prolific, releasing albums regularly right up to the present day after leaving America for rural Nagano prefecture, both under his own name and the pseudonym Sweet Robots Against the Machine. He's continued to collaborate with Ryuichi Sakamoto and the rest of Yellow Magic Orchestra, along with big-name Japanese artists like Verbal, Pizzicato Five and Satoshi Tomiie; what he is perhaps most famous for, though, is his prominence in the “Shibuya-kei” microgenre of J-pop, a mixture of sample-heavy electronic music with influences from jazz, the 90's lounge music revival, and forgotten 60's and 70's pop and psychedelic records. It's pretty interesting stuff, if you'd like to check any of his solo work out. Dmitry has been much quieter, only releasing one DJ mix album in 1999 and a collaboration with Julee Cruise in 2011, but he still tours the international club circuit and does some remixes here and there. As for Kier, she has also been doing that since the late 90's after she began learning the technical side of production, as well as doing some collaborations with her old friends in the P-funk collective, but despite performing some new songs live, she has never released a solo record. She's more active these days in the fashion world, with some publications even referring to her as one of music's greatest style icons, as well as in her long-standing work as a human rights activist. And of course “Groove Is In the Heart” has remained one of the defining 90's dance jams, appearing in all kinds of movies and TV shows... including, just last year, an episode of Big Mouth that was entirely based around the group's music in order to deliver a message in support of Planned Parenthood (for whom Kier is a longtime advocate). I'm going to be honest, I sat through about half an episode of Big Mouth before I turned it off – to me, the art style is just fucking ugly in the same way that old-school Klasky-Csupo used to be – but if you like it, well, more power to you, I guess.
Also the talking vagina kind of made me feel like I had been added to a list of some sort.
Oh yeah, and I would be remiss not to share this before moving onto the commentary. In 2000, Sega released a rhythm game called Space Channel 5 on the Dreamcast... and three years later, Kier sued them with a claim that the lead character Ulala was an unauthorised use of her likeness. Kier claimed that Sega had offered her $16,000 to license “Groove Is In the Heart” for advertisements, and that she had turned them down and refused them permission to use her look, but that they had done it anyway. The case dragged on for three years, but in the eventuality, Sega were able to prove in court that the game had been conceived and given its Japanese release in 1999 (a year before Kier claimed they had approached her), and that Ulala was sufficiently different enough to constitute a “transformative work”. Kier ended up having to pay the defendant's legal fees under California law – a total of $608,000. Ah, that's where hubris gets you, I suppose. But Ulala totally does look like her though.
OVER TO THE PEANUT GALLERY
How do you say, “Deee-sgusting”?
əʊæ (1): Makes me feel as if i had flies nested in my ears.
Empty Shoebox (4): I've never liked this but I now remember just how awful the penny whistles are.
DJHazey (4): For some reason I thought this was more of a eurodance song than a disco revival track and not really a good one at that.
Untouchable Ace (5.1): This one's hard to rate it's a little bit cringe and I don’t find it deee-lite-ful.
Ooh la la la la-la-la-la-la
Auntie Beryl (9.5): Difficult to see this not being top 5 in this rate. I have removed half a mark to give the other songs a fighting chance.
CasuallyCrazed (8.5): An absolute corker of a song. The only downside is its been overplayed to death at every wedding, barmitzvah and gay club for the last 20 years.
Filippa (7): I love this song until it gets so annoying that I have to stop listening.
iheartpoptarts (9): The random Dr. Seuss reference is a highlight.
Andy French (8): Lowkey pressed this was their defining single because it's not my favorite, but it did get me into their incredible back catalogue so there's that!
pop3blow2 (9): One the first really wonky dance pop songs I remember really being into. This came out when I was in middle school & I was already a pretty hardcore pop nerd. I thought it was really creative then & still do. It holds up to me as sort of a classic & ahead of its time.
DominoDancing (9): What a pleasure this song is. A classic for a reason.
Sprockrooster (8): I am whistling all day now and I do not mind!
berserkboi (9.8): Classic!
unnameable (10): As St Julia of Stiles said, “Gotta endorphinise!” Not quite as good as ‘a good beat’ but still fantastic after all these years.
GimmeWork (10): Complete CLASSIC!
Seventeen Days (10): BAWP and a half, this is eternally a dance classic. They even got Bootsy Collins to play on this track, which automatically gives them tons of cool points.
Hudweiser (10): Such an anthem. Throughout my teens I never knew what it was called because I thought she was singing "Groovers in the Hall"...
Blond (10): One of the ultimate gay ass 90s dance tracks. It’s got such a nice hip-hop feel to it and it’s not as in-your-face as the likes of Rhythm Is A Dancer or Show Me Love, but it’s just as likely to make you lose your shit in a club.
yuuurei (10): I loved this song sooo much in like 8th grade, around 2001, after I taped it off the radio. I even had a whole dance routine to it. It's still a fun bop!
WowWowWowWow (10): If we ever have a Popjustice meetup and karaoke is involved, I will be performing this song, and I won’t need accompaniment because I know all of the words, even the rap. It would be my succotash wish to do this.
AshleyKerwin (10): Totally bonkers. Queen of house.
2014 (10): Iconic bop! Soooooooo catchy and just a classic really.
4Roses (10): An anthem, you can't but help but get up and dance with ass off.
chanex (10): We're going to dance and have some fun. Enough said except that in college everyone clapped along to the chorus and I felt like a star when I knew all the words to the Q Tip rap they cut from some of the single mixes at least in the US which would always crush me. Deee-Lite is so so underrated, especially lyrically. 1 2 3 bluughughughughgh
ModeRed (10): A solid 10 if ever there was one! - that beat, that vocal which is instantly memorable… nearly my 11.
he/him
I hear the faint sound of gleeful cackling floating down from northern New England tonight.
