B-side Remix Recorded 1991 Length 5:32
3:45 (7" Edit) | Released 30 March 1992 Genre Eurodance | |
Format 7" Single
CD Single
Maxi Single | ||
"Rhythm Is a Dancer" is a song recorded by German group Snap!. It was released in March 1992 and achieved huge success in many countries around the world, topping the charts in France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. It also reached the top 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the US Hot Dance Music/Club Play Singles. The single spent six weeks at the top in the UK where it was the second biggest selling single of 1992, surpassed only by Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You".
Contents
- Lyrics and music
- Music video
- Impact and legacy
- Chart performances
- Cover versions
- Appearances in other media
- Official versions
- References
The song was the second single from the album The Madman's Return. It was written by Alex von Rutenberg, John "Virgo" Garrett III (aliases for German producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti), singer Thea Austin, and rapper Turbo B and produced by Snap!.
Lyrics and music
The track features lead vocals by Thea Austin and a rap by Turbo B.
According to Miz hit. tubes, a book which analyses the French pop charts, "This discotheque song alternates female singing in the chorus with fluid, set back male raps in the verses. These are tinted with a resonant sonority, which gives them an astonishingly melancholic softness, for a Dance hit. That gives the whole track a particular colour, almost nostalgia."
The rap lyrics on the main version (not the 7" edit) are a slightly modified version of the following lines from an essay by John Perry Barlow called "Being in Nothingness Virtual Reality and the Pioneers of Cyberspace".
How very like the future this place might be: a tiny world just big enough to support the cubicle of one Knowledge Worker. I feel a wave of loneliness and head back down. But I'm going too fast. I plunge right on through the office floor and into the bottomless indigo below. Suddenly I can't remember how to stop and turn around. Do I point behind myself? Do I have to turn around before I can point? I flip into brain fugue.
It also contains what one critic called the worst lyric of all time, "I'm as serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer". The original album version of the song did not contain the line, which is found on the more widely known 7" single of the song that was later added to the album. Although Snap! were criticized for the lyric, the line had been used in hip hop music since the late '80s.
"Rhythm Is a Dancer" is written in the key of A minor with a tempo of 124 beats per minute in common time. The song follows a chord progression of F–G–Am, and the vocals span from A3 to C5.
Music video
The music video for "Rhythm Is a Dancer" was directed by Howard Greenhalgh and shows singer Thea Austin and a backup band in the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex's rocket garden filled with smoke. Austin and her group perform the song on elevated platforms while a group of dancers dance on a closed ground platform below them. Interspersed throughout these scenes are animated shots of flickering astronomy/aviation maps and animated figures dancing.
Impact and legacy
VH1 placed "Rhythm Is a Dancer" at #36 in their list of 100 Greatest Dance Songs [2]
MTV Dance placed "Rhythm Is a Dancer" at #4 in their list of The 100 Biggest 90's Dance Anthems Of All Time in November 2011.
Chart performances
"Rhythm Is a Dancer" was the second single by Snap! to reach No. 1 in the United Kingdom, the song remained six weeks at the top position in 1992, from 2 August to 13 September. It is their biggest hit single to date, with 492,175 sales during the original British chart run. A massive hit across the world, it also topped the chart in Germany for ten weeks, and peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States in early 1993. In France, "Rhythm Is a Dancer" debuted at No. 5 on 8 August 1992, before climbing to No. 1 four weeks later (where it stayed for six weeks). The track thus became the first dance single to hit the number one position on the French Singles Chart.
Snap! themselves re-recorded their own song in 1996 and 2003, the latter with CJ Stone (as "Rhythm is a Dancer 2003"). It reached number 17 on the UK Singles Chart in May 2003.
On 25 May 2008, "Rhythm Is a Dancer" re-entered the UK Singles Chart at number 36, climbing as high as number 23 two weeks later. BBC Radio 1 DJs Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates theorized it was based on download performance, due to its inclusion in a television advertisement for Drench water.
On 31 March 2012, "Rhythm is a Dancer" was chosen "Best Song of the Nineties" in the Nineties Top 99 on the Belgian Radio MNM for the 4th year in a row.
Cover versions
"Rhythm Is a Dancer" has been covered by numerous artists including German singer Key Biscayne (aka Lian Ross) in 1992, Italian radio host Leone di Lernia who recorded a parody of the song in Italian, Max Deejay who recorded an instrumental cover in 1997, System Drivers in 2002, The Superb, a Brazilian rock act produced by Chilean DJ Sokio in 2005, Israeli-Italian artist Sagi Rei for his 2005 album Emotional Songs, Chic Flowerz featuring Muriel Folwer in 2006. In 1993 Kids Incorporated covered "Rhythm Is a Dancer" in the Season 9 episode "Teamwork".
Appearances in other media
The song was often used in films or series, including in an episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 during its third season in 1993, in a scene of the 2010 comedy movie Cop Out. The song was also featured in TV adverts, including in the 1995 ad for the Ford Escort on German television, and in 2008, in a TV commercial in the UK for "Drench" spring water, which features Brains (Thunderbirds) from the 1960s Gerry Anderson Puppet series Thunderbirds and used an edited version of the original "Rhythm Is a Dancer", bringing the song back into the UK singles chart on 9 June 2008, at number 23.