SPECIAL POPULAR ANNOUNCEMENT: The NEXT entry after this will be discussed at 7PM tonight on Resonance 104.4 FM, on the Lollards of Pop show. This will feed into the next text entry proper, in a bold new multi-media departure for Popular. Hearing the radio show will in no sense be necessary to understand the entry or subsequent discussion but it might give you some interesting ideas! Tune in!
“The Power” is a bit like “Dub Be Good To Me”‘s European exchange partner – some of the same ingredients but mixed in very different proportions. The song juggles aggression and melancholy, and makes both immediately appealing – the juddering riff which opens “The Power” set against the slow pace and lonesome spaciousness of the production and Pennye Ford’s vocals. The riff is more distinctive than the singing, to be honest, but the contrast works.
Even so “The Power” hasn’t aged particularly well – it sounds far feebler now than it once did. Sad to say a lot of this failing of strength is down to poor Turbo B, whose rapping is ponderous even as it dominates the song. There are no real howlers in the lyrics but nothing memorable either – it sounds like the producers simply liked the idea of a rapper and didn’t care what if anything he might be saying. To be fair to Snap! they were hardly the only European trackmongers to take this tack, and as we’ll see it sometimes worked. But Turbo B is a drag on the record – a big finger-wagging lump, plodding crossly into imagined battle: “I will attack! And you don’t want that!”. There’s an infectious innocence to most early 90s Eurodance tracks which keeps them endearing, like 60s dance-craze hits – so I still enjoy this record, but powerful it’s not.
Score: 6
[Logged in users can award their own score]
Wow, I was really expecting a 9 or 10 for this. Still sounds good to me, and far more catchy than “Dub”. Okay, it dips a bit after a fantastic intro, but still, it’s gittin’, it’s gittin’, it’s gittin kinda… 8.
The introductory Sputnik commentary instantly conjures up the spirit of Joe Meek, and some of that slightly mischievous spirit pervades the rest of “The Power.” Although packaged as a cutting-edge rap-dance track “recorded in Cold Storage, Brixton” (strictly speaking in Camberwell, and the studio most famously used by the post-punk group This Heat, if we’re talking 24-track loops) Snap! were a German duo – the Teutonic Black Box, more or less – and all of the vocal tracks were re-deployed from existing records; the rapper (“I’m the lyrical Jesse James”) was one Rob Chill G (who knew nothing about the record until it became successful, despite his “Copywritten words, so they can’t be stolen” for which he duly received a co-writing credit and royalties) and various sampled soul divas provide the singing.
So, once more, “The Power” was concerned with reusing elements of the old, or other parallel presents, to help construct something new. It has aged slightly better than “Ride On Time” if only because of its jittery, and decidedly Germanic, take on hip hop beats and the fact that it still sounds like a fantastic clarion call, from its malfunctioning, distortion-heavy synth riff at the beginning (the Scorpions and Michael Schenker survive in strange ways) via its insistent cowbell-driven rhythm and the deft use of layers of voices (“It’s gettin, it’s gettin’, it’s gettin’ kinda hectic”) and also because it transcended its dubious origins to become a cutting edge track; in the clubs of early 1990 it stopped everyone dead in a genuine WHAT THE FUCK? sense and it’s still capable of getting me out of bed even today. Naturally, compared with the true apocalyptic blitzkrieg of Fear Of A Black Planet (which we bought, on import, on the morning of the poll tax riots) its cosmetics show through; but in those uncertain weeks as the wreckage (and not just physical) was slowly meditated over, “The Power” was a pop alarm clock issuing wake-up calls on an hourly basis. “Don’t need the police!”
Yeah v harsh and I think it’s pretty powerful myself having alluded to the influence of the Bomb Squad and J&L/Janet Jackson’s industrial aggression mode on this. I love this track now probably more than I ever did – definitely 8 or more. The ‘bells’ loop was as common a sampled break as the Soul II Soul beats e.g. The Farm’s cover of ‘Stepping Stone’ from around the same time.
I love the bit in Hudson Hawk where Sandra Bernhardt starts singing this. Talk about Hollywood crossover!
Yeah I thought I might catch some flak for the mark but while I’d still welcome hearing it now it’s lost most of its lustre for me: I see the Janet Jackson comparisons but her “industrial” stuff just sounds so much cleaner and bigger and more mechanised (in a good way!). Went into it expecting to give a 7, but was underwhelmed.
This is the first #1 example of the ‘bad rapper plus female singer’ Eurodance formula that would dominate the early 90s, right? A straight classic for the riff plus chorus alone IMO, I’d have given it an 8, surprised it didn’t do better.
Very interested to see how this will fare in comparison to the two other titanic pillars of this formula from 1993 and 1994, incidentally.
Love Turbo B’s rap and Penny Ford’s (and again that’s not her in the video – shame on ’em) vocals equally. “Dig it like a shovel, rhyme devil on a heavenly level bang the bass turn up the treble” is just one of the lines I love and the “s’gittin’ kinda heavy” loop from Ford is a great lift off another sound from another time (swingin’ jazz!).
I have spent 20 years thinking it was “it’s gettin’ kinda hectic”.
It is, from Turbo B, but I’ve always heard Ford’s bit as ‘heavy’.
I think it is.
A new genre which reached its rotten rap nadir with Heavy D’s Now That We’ve Found Love (“What can we do? What are we gonna do? Roses are red and violets are blue”). But there plenty of peaks, and this was the first. Tom, good call on early 60s dance craze 45s – The Power could be a heavier take on Chris Montez’s Let’s Dance riff.
The unexpected Euro melancholy of the “He’s gonna break your heart” section comes in just as the novelty of the stab hook starts to fizzle out. It hasn’t dated as well as the cosmic Exterminate, there is a lightness beyond the mindblowing cowbell loop. But it’s still fresh and so much fun, as playful as Beats Intl, as oddly alien as Ride On Time. An 8 from me.
You’ve gotta love a rap about intellectual property, “copywritten” ten years before Napster…
Still sounds like “it’s gettin’ kinda hectic” to me in Turbo B’s vocals, although it’s definitely “kinda heavy” in Penny Ford’s earlier singing. Also, the video flashes “HECTIC” when Turbo B raps it.
I think this still founds pretty vast, and it was terrific to dance to in 1990 with nice footfall markers in those pounding beats. Turbo sounds a little slower now, sure; back then he sounded menacing. For new students, ‘The Power’ was still rocking the Studio in Bristol that autumn, along with ‘What Time Is Love?’, ‘Cubik’, ‘Aftermath’ and – ahem – Adamski’s ‘Space Jungle’.
Good call too, Steve, on The Farm’s ‘Stepping Stone’.
My first thought on hearing this t’other day, for the first time in donkey’s years, was that it’s aged remarkably well (I wasn’t a big fan at the time): and also that it’s surprisingly melancholic (even just plain miserable) for a dance number (by no means the only rap-featuring number 1 of 1990 to which that applies), and fairly slow as well.
I kind of wish they’d never “invented themselves as a band” after this became a hit: so much of their subsequent stuff was pure unadulterated lowest common denominator dross. Rather than being a straight pop song, this works because of the way (indeed like “Dub be good to me”) it combines complimentary (or possibly even contradictory) elements.
And as for the Russian…well, I suppose the cold war wasn’t QUITE over yet.
Second hit of the year to mention Jesse James, too!
So which version went to number one? The Rob Chill G-sampling original, or Turbo B’s re-recording?
Never mind, answering my own question on YouTube. The earlier Chill Rob G version sounds pretty good too.
I was on a school geography trip on the Isle of Skye when this hit number one. In my memory we had one radio between us and were huddled around it listening to the chart, and this leapt from nowhere to the top spot, leading to much headscratching and “what on earth’s this?”. We felt very cut off from the world. (Apologies, Skyeites.)
Whilst I never really loved the track it did feel exciting, though listening to it now my jaded old ears were bored within a minute.
I also find this a bit ponderous, largely because of the rap sections which lack the invention, syncopation and presence that were becoming common place in the developing Hip Hop scene at that time. I like the other bits though
Great sleeve!
I’d been holding off on listening to this one b/c I knew it was coming up fairly soon – of course, within seconds of it starting my reaction was ‘oh it’s THAT one’, the title line having been used in countless adverts since (or does it just feel that way?). With that in mind the relatively dirty and warehouse-like rest of the song is refreshingly different from the hectoring self-help I was expecting. 7 I reckon.
Also used heavily (or hectically) every late Dec/early Jan whenever world darts champion Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor takes the stage at Ally Pally.
#18 as a chart phenom it really did come out of nowhere (#12 on imports one week, #1 on release the next) – I guess clubbers were familiar with it already, and obviously this kind of thing became pretty commonplace later on.
#21 apparently it has a pretty lengthy afterlife in US sports too. Is this a “Jock Jam” US popularites?
“And now ladies and gentleman the 15 times champion of the world its phil ‘the power’ taylor.”
its probably most famous these days as phil taylors walk on music in darts and TBH i wouldnt really have known it otherwise.works well with the darts as the song has a sense of doom about it when paired with taylor.
Having said that its a fairly good early baseball-capped euro stomper with a bit to offer and a sure sign that this was the 90s.a bit lightweight compared to other dance hits of the time with the exception of norman cooks effort.
enjoyable enough but wouldnt say its dated badly at all.especially compared to some dance/rap entries in 1990.
would have been a 7 from me but considering chancers all around europe/us shamelessly milked the formula for all it was worth (get ready for this,everybody dance now etc) im prepared to agree with tom.
I didn’t think I knew either this or the previous entry, although on checking them out on Youtube I find I do recognise elements of both, as well as them being recognisably a sound of an era that really doesn’t seem all that long ago now. It was only a couple of years later (though I’m getting ahead of myself here) I visited the Virgin Megastore in Bristol looking for music for learning Leroc dancing, because this was the time I was learning that peculiarly (at the time) Bristolian fad. Seeing a sign reading “DANCE MUSIC” I headed for it under the naive illusion that there I would find something suitably rhythmic to practice my hatchbacks, wurlitzers and pretzels. I was disappointed there (but did find a cheap compilation of rock’n’roll greats elsewhere in the shop).
There is something I’m curious about. This kind of thing was dubbed ‘Dance’ music as if nobody had ever thought of dancing to earlier kinds of music. I’ve only once ever been inside a ‘club’ (in this context) at least partly because one of my failings is a deep phobia about dark, crowded, noisy enclosed spaces, and on that one occasion (the Blue Mountain Club in Bristol) on finding that all rooms were pretty much the same I sought refuge on the roof. So I can’t really imagine what kind of dancing one does to it. It certainly seems to me to have nothing of “vertical expression of a horizontal desire”, unless it is the desire to run away and bury one’s head under the pillow until the throbbing stops. Did passionate affaires de coeur often get cemented to The Power?
Yes, I know I’m not going to have a very happy time over the next few Popular years but I’ll hang in there and hope that I may even be educated! At the moment all I have is a headache from that thumping bass. Even when I just think about it!
Not so much “affaires de coeur”, but “The Power” from my point of wiew, is forever locked in with the beginning of a downward spiral towards complete nervous/mental breakdown. The week this reached #1 was the same week my beloved jack russell, Tuppence, shuffled off this mortal coil. My canine companion from childhood died at the grand old age of 16, leaving an enormous hole in my life. The death of a pet can be as traumatic as the death of a close family member, when they’ve been around and part of the family since The Osmonds were in their full pomp. I was inconsolable for days.
Had I been in a more positive place, I could have drawn strength from a song built around “I’ve got the Power!” as a lyric, but I never sought to derive anything from it. It’s not so much of a painful memory when I remember a friend of mine doing crouch-spins to it on the dancefloor, which was quite hilarious. I would mark it higher, if spring 1990 was a better time for me, but no.
Amazed and a bit disappointed this is so well liked cos I’ve always found it ugly chuntering rubbish. It’s those two obnoxious hooks slamming into one another. The rest of it is just a bit of a drone.
My only dispute with the mark is that I think it’s too high.
Dub Be Good To Me sounded like the work of people who really knew their music matching up styles with confidence. The Power sounds more like people jumping 3 or 4 bandwagons at once and fluking a smash.
No sorry – the kind of track my parents would hate and um..I would actually agree with them.
I’m surprised to learn that this is a composite record, because whenever I hear it I think that the hooks could go on to be reconstituted into something much better.
Sixth-form reaction approved of the blaring riff and the residual touches of soul cred, but Snap! themselves were so clearly a made-up proposition – and Turbo B such a poor frontman – that nobody took ‘The Power’ to heart.
The big chart pop excitement of April 1990, alongside the next Popular entry, was ‘Step On’ by The Happy Mondays, which felt like a much bigger hit than it was (no. 5), and is nowadays as well remembered as ‘The Power’.
TOTPWatch: Snap! twice performed ‘The Power’ on Top Of The Pops;
22 March 1990. Also in the studio that week were; Big Fun, Orbital (Yes!) and They Might Be Giants. Gary Davies was the host.
5 April 1990. Also in the studio that week were; Happy Mondays, Emma (who?) and Jason Donovan. Anthea Turner was the host.
re: #27 – this is an prime example of what was going wrong with pop at the time – it’s monotonous, artificial-sounding rubbish. It was also apparently once used for psyching up some poor devils who worked in a call centre. See you in the Britpop era.
#29 Emma was the British entry in the Eurovision tnat year. IIRC a blonde young lady, who sang an inane why-can’t-we-all-hold-hands-and-love-one-another track (if we all carry on singing songs like this we will stop the imminent outbreak of war in Yugoslavia for good measure), the sort of thing favoured Eurovision-wise in those days (the slightly superior entry of the next year by Samantha Janus, “A Message To Your Heart” was a bit similar). Emma’s waste of vinyl was called “Give A Little Love Back To The World”.
I think it was a British attempt, eight years too late, to replicate the German winner of 1982, “A little Peace”, by another blonde young lady just known by one name, Nicole..
And it was bloody terrible.
Worse than Big Fun. Honestly, That bad.
Yes this is a Jock Jam, appearing on Jock Jams (why oh why wasn’t it Jamz?) vol. 1, not quite up there with 2 Unlimited but still played.
I heard the Chill Rob G version first but could never find it in stores, and the Snap! version took over the world.
I really enjoyed hearing The Power for the first time in ages last year as part of a freakytrigger ‘decade-off’ exercise, and I’ve listened to it a couple of times since with pleasure…. But now, when The Power’s #1 episode arrives on Popular, I suddenly find myself, like Tom apparently, relatively immune to its charms. Strange. Anyhow, there is a kind of interesting ambiguity about the song. There’s a hint of Public Enemy/Rakim/NWA, power coming from the streets, etc. stuff about it for sure. But the brutal riff feels centralizing, quasi-Orwellian hence like a menace *to* ‘people on the streets’ rather than one they’re dishing out. And it’s the latter idea/vibe that quickly seemed to take over as the song lingered in popular culture: a hellish mix of deoderant commercials, motivational speakers, jock jams, shock jocks in the movies, all were quickly on it as I recall. Perhaps I’ve listened to The Power enough recently so that I’m principally ‘hearing’ all of that cultural baggage again rather than its tasty-teutonic side (Kraftwerk’s Numbers is in this track’s DNA surely) which ‘got me’ last year? So, I agree with Tom’s 6 now, but would definitely have gone higher last year – what a fickle beast I am!
Ten years ago, had you shown me the list of every single number 1 since I was born and asked me to name the ones I recognised, this would have been the first. Well, along with ‘Mistletoe & Wine’ but as a festive release that doesn’t count. Still a bit too young to remember it new, but it was that common throughout the 1990s.
All I can say is wow. Some years have great songs coming out, but not the ones that get to #1 – instead its the novelty songs or boyband flavour of the months that get the top spot, with the true classics confined to the remainder of the top 5. But right now, 1990’s on an absolute roll – although starting shaky with NKOTB and Kylie, the last THREE number 1s I’d give 9 or 10 to (NC2U, Dub Be Good To Me, and this). And sneaking a peak at what’s next, oh yes yes yes indeed.
This got to number 1 right after the poll tax protest, right? Very fitting…definitely the people, and not Thatcher who had the power there. Twenty years on and those of us at yesterday’s tuition fee protest (including me, but I wasn’t one of the window-smashers) have, erm, Rihanna as our #1 soundtrack. Oh well.
Reading the review and the comments I was expecting to be underwhelmed, but no, it’s still good to my ears. Even Turbo B (ludicrous but still fun(ny) to listen to) comes out of it well.
Admittedly this is a template which will be horrifically abused in the next few years, but for now all’s fine.
Very much a Jock Jam, I think of it as the Romulus to Gonna Make You Sweat’s Remus, the birth of the tasteless but all-consuming Eurodance anthem which twenty years later has resulted in the Max Martin 2010 we’ve had, if that’s not baiting the bunny too much.
No not my thing at all. Hated it then, hate it now. Sorry.
For some reason, I wasn’t content with just disliking this; I have always actively despised this record.
Not exactly sure why, but I still detest it now.
Someone mentioned upthread that Snap! went on to produce lowest-common-denominator crap, but I would add this one to that list. I was never much of a clubber, and I in my own experience, I think “dance” music’s takeover of the charts, starting around this point, was the biggest single factor which destroyed the chart as a genuine source of enjoyment for many. (The Cowellisation of later years only worsened things, as has the “featured artist” or “feat.” phenomenon which anonymises so much of today’s music – and also makes it harder to get pub quizzes right – Jimmy Savile would win lots of points playing the 2009 chart.)
Don’t get me wrong, I do like a lot of dance tracks; but as far as I am concerned, they are there to be danced to, not to be listened to, and most don’t transfer away from the clubs well – how often have you heard a great track in a club, only to be mightily disappointed when you heard it at home?
Rant over….. for now, anyway.
Come on VS, quit sitting on the fence!
#37 – what, not even the Singing Corner version?
I would of course disagree and say that the biggest single factor that has turned people off the charts over the last twenty or so years is not the predominance of dance music or Simon Cowell but the hype machine which has turned the singles chart into a demonstration of record company marketing strategies rather than a reflection of genuine popularity. The same could be said to a more limited extent of the album chart but I’ll be addressing that in good time.
Weirdly I’m having much the same reaction as Tom: listening back to it now, have nothing but fond memories of it, discovering there’s a reason I never actually go back to listen to it. Would still give it a 7, because the Pennye Ford vocals and THAT RIFF are both so classic. I agree w/Jonathan B’s comparison to “Gonna Make You Sweat” @36 – except “Gonna Make You Sweat” really does hold up way way better as an exciting dance track.
I’m surprised this hasn’t been sampled more extensively, especially in the last few years with rappers constantly jacking ’90s Eurodance beats. Fairly sure there are plenty of examples but it’s 6.30am here in Miami, and I’m jetlagged, hungover and not yet caffeinated.
I think “dance” music’s takeover of the charts, starting around this point, was the biggest single factor which destroyed the chart as a genuine source of enjoyment for many.
Route-one Eurotrash dance like this was pretty much my route into the charts; the first song I became addicted to, that I needed to hear over and over again, was Shanice’s “I Love Your Smile”, but the first (cassette) album I ever bought was Now! Dance ’91; there was a mystique around artists like Shanice for me, not only because I hadn’t yet discovered magazines where I could read about them and get to know them as people but also because the world of the teenager or adult still seemed weird to 9-year-old me. On the other hand, I knew exactly what I was meant to do to the high-octane riffs and beats of early ’90s dance. Particular favourites were Oceanic’s “Insanity”, Rozalla’s “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)”, Bizarre Inc & Angie Brown’s “I’m Gonna Get You” (bought on cassingle y’all), 2 Unlimited’s “Get Ready For This”…
The terrible Euro rapper is definitely something that has held up badly, not that I remember being particularly fond of them at the time, certainly not compared to the big-voiced diva singers.
@41 Turbo B was an imported American rapper, wasn’t he?
Marcello, I agree with you regarding the hype machine, but surely the environment for the hype machine to flourish was created around this time (in part anyway) by the emergence of faceless pop (indie guilty here too) created by producers and opportunists rather than by artists and popstars?
Pop itself was equally guilty with a few notable exceptions – a quick look down the chart on the day this made #1 shows it to be a rather uninspiring list – probably around now (still aged only 29) would be the first time since the early 70s I didn’t buy at least half of the chart (only 34 of the top 100 listed on chartstats).
#40 I agree with you to some extent MC but who were the “genuinely popular” artists whose chart positions were presumably being depressed by the hypers ?
I don’t think dance took over as such ; it held its ground as did metal (and we’re not far off the first real metal topper)while mainstream pop (represented by Transvision Vamp, Jesus Jones and the fag-end of SAW) slipped out of contention in a time of diminishing singles sales.
Anyway glad to have you back – is TPL going to get back in its previous rhythm ? Monday night had become Marcello night for me !
Swanstep #33 – indeed, it turned up in Mike’s unmissable “Which Decade is Tops for Pops” back in May (and I’m chuffed that we’re already halfway to the next one). At the time I said, “one of those records that revises your opinion of what a genre of music is capable of. That electrifying riff, the threatening rap, the vocal – the whole package is still a thrill twenty years on.” And although Snap came second in that round to Brenda Lee’s “Sweet Nothin’s” (!) I’d stand by that. It is one of those records that’s not my usual thing but really crossed over, with the video and the proto-MC Hammer dancing all part of the appeal.
Turbo B – ex-GI and bomb defusal expert, apparently – looks threatening and cuddly at the same time standing at that lectern. We’d just seen Bush senior and Gorbachev officially ending the Cold War, and in those few months before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait it seemed the threats to world peace were being resolved (“the end of history” as Francis Fukuyama posited in an essay in summer ’89, although he’s at pains to say he was misinterpreted). The sound of that stern man delivering Awful Warnings (“I will attack” and all that) conveyed less genuine menace than Patrick Allen talking about the air attack six summers earlier. But I digress.
As a rap, I must say I’m less unimpressed with it than some of those above – it doesn’t have to be quickfire to be effective – and the rhythm is lot more interesting than your average “dance” track, letting you sway and stomp as well as doing the MC Hammer. But when you get to examine who’s actually doing what, it’s blooming confusing. So the rap was by Rob Chill G but re-spoken by Turbo B, the vocals were by Penny(e) Ford but that’s Jackie Harris in the video (both women were in the band at various points until Thea Austin joined them for their next big hit), and there are samples of Jocelyn Brown (the hook that includes the title) and Mantronix. So the whole thing is not so much a song by a band as a compilation album in miniature – but as a package I have to admit it sounds great.
By genuine popularity I meant records, not artists.
The decline is due to the lack of creativity and intelligence (not to mention Canute-like tendencies upon the advent of Napster) on the part of record companies; all they do is hype their top priorities, pile them high and sell them cheap in the first week of release to get instant sales. Thus lots of crap got to number one, thereby destroying whatever credibility the charts had left.
I didn’t think there was anything wrong with hype when the quality of the record demanded it – “Hey Joe,” for instance – but the majors simply carry on with their diminishing trick of copying established (Spanish?) practices without really understanding why they’re doing it, except to maintain the feeblest of toeholds on an eradicated market.
About TPL – well, let’s see how it goes. Still househunting so don’t expect miracles but I do want to get back to one album a week. If I didn’t have a day job it would be five albums a week but there you go.
There has been faceless pop since the days of Mitch Miller so that’s not really an issue; great pop is always there for those willing and able to find it. Not wanting to do any bunny tempting here but when we get to it you’d hardly know it was the era of Britpop.
If mainstream pop was represented by Jesus Jones then huzza for Snap!
I didn’t know it was Penny Ford singing on this, I have a rather good single of hers (under the name “Pennye Ford”) called “Dangerous”
The rap is crap (!) but no denying the, um, power of that chorus.
Went out to Turkey with the dance troup. They’d asked us to have a routine based on the number 1 record in the UK at the time.
Unfortunately, the day we left the UK, this was deposed by the Mmmmommm hit, “Mmgmm”, and we watched *that* video and said, ach, we haven’t go time to sort costumes and routines for *THAT* one out. So we told them “nooh, it’s still “The Power” at the moment.