anniversary
“Mr. Vain” or “Sing Hallelujah!” – 30 years of Eurodance
Members of Loona perform at the Comet Media Awards ceremony in August 1998. Her well-known hit was “Bailando”. photo
© Achim Scheidemann/dpa
“What Is Love”: 30 years ago, Eurodance was popular. In 1993, the wave swept over Germany with particular force. The summer hit was called “Mr. Vain”. A journey through time – connecting to the present in 2023.
Whether the singing dentist Dr. Alban from Sweden, DJ BoBo from Switzerland or dance floor formations from Germany like Snap and Culture Beat: They all belong to the Eurodance era. After the Neue Deutsche Welle ten years earlier and the geopolitical turning point of 1989 to 1991, three decades ago pop music was suddenly more international, pan-European and also more diverse.
One of the biggest hits of this post-Cold War period was Culture Beat’s “Mr. Vain”. The song entered the German charts 30 years ago and became the summer hit of ’93. “Mr. Vain” was number one for nine weeks (June 21 to August 22, 1993). The hit producer Torsten Fenslau died in the same year at the age of only 29. On November 6, 1993, he was in a fatal car accident near Messel near Darmstadt.
The genre name “Eurodance” was later given to the pop phenomenon with catchy tunes from Aqua (“Barbie Girl”) to Mo-Do (“Eins, Zwei, Polizei”) to Rednex (“Cotton Eye Joe”). At that time, cultural critics liked to call the music “funfair techno”. Many parents christened the music – meant derogatory – “kids’ techno”. The formula for songs of this kind was (or is): 124 beats per minute (BPM), female soul voice, male rap.
Mother or father of all Eurodance hits is “Rhythm Is a Dancer” from 1992. The dance group Snap already had a world hit in 1990 with “The Power”. For ten weeks – from the end of May to the beginning of August 1992 – “Rhythm Is a Dancer” by Frankfurt producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti was number one in Germany. Immediately afterwards came Dr. Alban at number one for eight weeks with “It’s My Life”.
The Eurodance year par excellence
1993, the Eurodance year par excellence, began in Germany with “More and More” at the top – the song came from the Captain Hollywood Project. The rapper and breakdance artist Tony Dawson-Harrison alias Captain Hollywood was the namesake here. also dr Alban’s “Sing Hallelujah!” was a hit in ’93: “The title reached fourth place and was in the top position for a total of 33 weeks,” as the investigators of the Official German Charts from GfK Entertainment report.
In large discos from Flensburg to Füssen, pop songs of this kind were celebrated as if there were no tomorrow – “No Limit” just like the hit by 2 Unlimited (29 weeks in the charts in 1993).
Haddaway’s “What Is Love” spent a total of 39 weeks on the charts from February to November 1993. “The title is currently quite popular again – or at least parts of it,” says GfK Entertainment. “Because the hook is used by David Guetta (feat. Anne Marie & Coi Leray) on his new song Baby Don’t Hurt Me.”
Lack of diversity in the German-speaking cultural sector
“For years there have been debates about the lack of diversity in the German-speaking cultural sector and opening processes have been longed for,” says the sociologist and blogger Nadia Shehadeh. Germany and Europe have already been further along. “Eurodance was a cultural breakthrough. The singers and rappers of many Eurodance groups were mostly BIPoC and for half a decade provided the greatest diversity that European countries had experienced in their own pop market to date.”
According to Shehadeh, anyone who says that Eurodance is empty of content and superficial in a good mood is overlooking its unifying power and utopian character. At the end of the 90s there was a kind of relapse into the so-called old white times in parts of the culture.
BPoC or BIPoC comes from Anglo-American usage: Black or Black Indigenous People of Color means all people who are exposed to forms of racism, not just blacks.
Mix of hip hop and electronic dance music
Musicologist Nico Thom explains: “Eurodance productions are characterized by a clear division of labor: a team of European music producers creates a track and has attractive people of color rap, sing and dance to it – in English.” It’s basically a mix of hip-hop and electronic dance music. “The lyrics tend to be hedonistic and revolve around themes of infatuation, sexuality, music, dancing and carefree partying.”
Eurodance is controversial because it was mostly cast formations that did not hide their commercial interests and their chart orientation, says Thom, head of the Klaus Kuhnke Institute for Popular Music at the Bremen University of the Arts. “In this respect, Eurodance appears to some as synthetic, content-poor and neoliberal music.”
But Eurodance has contributed significantly to making techno internationally popular. The Eurodance artists gave electronic dance music a face and made it visually accessible with their video clips.