Eurodance: How children's technology in the nineties dominated the charts and large -scale discotheques

Do you still know that? Eurodance? That was this music genre with electrical beats, fair melodies and rapped texts in school English in the 1990s, gladly with silly song titles such asCoco Jamboo,Cotton Eye JoeorOne, two, police. And thisEurodance ruled the charts and large discotheques in the nineties. Only: why?

The crazy thing is: in the nineties the charts were full of Eurodance songs, but in the following decade the genre was dead and has not been resuscitated since then-at least not in its original form. We take a look back.

Anyone who was a teenager in the 1990s have burned the following, almost philosophical -looking lyrics into the cerebral cortex like hardly anything:

And with examples like this you could continue for hours. Not that there would not have been blunt texts before Eurodance, but the protagonists of this genre actually took the whole thing back to the extreme and also laid the basis for the soundtrack of every village fair by interaction of kindergarten melodies and cheap instrumentation . Honestly: At which Autoscooter stand at an X-like village festival were Snap, Rednex and Aqua not played up and down? Even.

Among the fans of Eurodance, the whole thing was often only called dance. If you were not so taken with it, for you was the children's or fair now- and if you listen to the songs today, you understand quite well, why. Because the Pulitzer prize -amended lyrics were always written in the very best school English who could even understand eleven -year -olds, although there was usually not too much to understand. But at passages such as “What is Love? Baby, Don′t Hurt Me/Don't Hurt Me, No more ”(fromWhat is Loveby Haddaway) you just know what it is about. What was then missing was filled with a few "Yeahs", "Lalalas" or "Dabadees". All of this became the listener on consolation andAll my little ducklings [children's song-Sänige melodies presented, in the second half there was often an embarrassing rap passage.

Oh yes, that was a crazy time back then and Eurodance the light-footed counterweight to the parallel grunge, which was a little bit too serious and sophisticated for a large part of the village tea. But: How could this musical equivalent actually come from hell?

The origins are mainly in Frankfurt, then the stronghold of electronic music. Especially from the environment of the Dorian Gray discotheque, which was located in Frankfurt Airport, there were a lot of DJs and producers who were looking for means and paths., To further develop EBM and trance, make it accessible to a larger target group and to better use commercially. These included protagonists such as Mark Spoon, the former resident DJ in Dorian Gray Torsten Fenslau and the producer duo Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti. And the nice thing about it was: finally a (at least temporary) relevant music did not come from the UK or the USA, but from the European mainland - that was also something that did not exist too often in contemporary music.

The first Eurodance songs likePump Up The JamFrom Technotronic (which came from Brussels) andThe PowerFrom Snap! were still significantly rough than later productions and had even greater influences from the hip-hop songs of the eighties (no wonder, however, Frankfurt was a GI-stronghold). Also in the US rap of the time there was an attempt to open a new chapter with the fusion of hip-hop bond bonds, which was called hip house (example:I’ll House Youof the Jungle Brothers), which those responsible could not set too large and far -reaching accents. Because dance -based genres such as House and Techno enjoyed increasing popularity in the local discos of the time, the producers at that time tried to create music that became justice.

The first real milestone of Eurodance then set Snap again! With your hitRhythm is a Dancer, which was not only able to get the place one of the charts in Germany, but even in the United States. From then on, the song acted as a blueprint how such Eurodance songs had to sound. The components were always the same: electronic beat, simple but catchy melody, female singer, male rapper. If you follow the following songs likeIt’s my Lifeby Dr. Alban (a former dentist from Sweden who is also the uncle of Ricky from Tic Tac toe) orMr. OnlyListening to Culture Beat immediately: the recipe for success was found - and was accordingly repeated and boiled.

At some point in the middle of theIn the course of increasing commercialization, the songs hardly had anything to do with their club roots, but primarily aimed at being played on MTVIVA and paying as big as possible. This was also the time when the different protagonists began to specialize in topic. For example, the K2 Bajuwar iodel sound was mixed with electrical beats (The mountain calls), The module were with pieces likeComputer loveandRobby robotsSomething like the power plant of Eurodance and E-Rotic, nomen est omen, with songs likeMax don’t have Sex with your Ex,Fred come to BedorWilly use a Billy…BoyEspecially on the sex topics.

At the end of the nineties, however, interest in Eurodance then ignored what had to do with the fact that the music channels no longer included the corresponding songs in their rotation. Many of the protagonists of the time then disappeared from the scene, and have only been again in recent years for party series such asDas MEGA 90er Live Open Airor the90s Super ShowDifferated again and led on stages. There, the stars of yore still regularly give their hits and the teenagers from back then clap the tact and remember their squeaky -colored youth in the nineties. And of course: Also at every fair in the country, the old Eurodance samplers are still up and down. EverySaturday Night- Write writing the kids.