The formula for 90s Eurodance was well established by now: strobe-lit dancing to urgent beats, big-voiced singers, a rap somewhere in the middle to change up the pace. It wasn’t the most thoughtful of music, but done well it had a real kick. And “Mr. Vain”, latecomer though it was, does it very well. It’s one of the most direct Eurodance hits, and one of the most aggressive. Eurodance lyricists could tend to pseudo-profundity, or calls to spiritual awakening: there’s none of that here.
Instead “Mr.Vain” heads straight for the dark heart of the club, sketching a dancefloor predator who – like Eezer Goode – is as much metaphor as character. For drugs, lust, loss of control – who knows? The lyrics’ almost-there English works to the song’s benefit – there’s an awkward poetry to “Call him Mr Raider, call him Mr Wrong” – and for once the obligatory rap isn’t an embarrassment, with Jay Supreme’s gloating, bassy flow reminding me of knowingly devilish Chicago house classics like “Your Only Friend”. “Mr Vain” is the hustling flipside to “All That She Wants”, and almost as good a pop record.
Score: 7
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Great song, but I prefere the official version of Nosie Katzmann:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NrM3egoe2c
More misheard lyrics – wasn’t sure if this was “Call him Mr Right or call him Mr Wrong”, or even “Call him Mr Raider, call him Mr Raw”. All makes the same amount of sense, which is part of the magic of Eurodance.
I much preferred all of Culture Beat’s other hits: Got To Get It has those minor chords, Anything has a weird new-wavey ravey vocal (“Should my hair be red or shall it be blue?!”), The World In Your Hands is properly atmos. Still, this is no slouch but a surprising no.1 when you considr the other Eurodance singles that didn’t make it.
Geeky pop history point: this was the first no.1 not available on a UK 7″ format since the early fifties (possibly Lita Roza, need to check). A whole era coming to an end etcet.
TOTPWatch: Culture Beat twice performed ‘Mr Vain’ on Top of the Pops;
12 Aug 1993. Also in the studio that week were; Green Jelly, Sarah Washington, Bad Boys Inc, Apache Indian and Yazz & Aswad. Tony Dortie was the host.
26 Aug 1993. Also in the studio that week were; Therapy?, Sisters of Mercy, Ace of Base and Mariah Carey, plus a live performance by satellite from Meat Loaf in Los Angeles. Tony Dortie was the host.
Light entertainment watch: Just two UK TV appearances for Culture Beat – who I don’t remember as being a particularly telegenic act – on the list;
THE O ZONE: with Barry Manilow, Culture Beat (1993)
THE SMASH HITS POLL WINNERS PARTY: with Culture Beat, Andi Peters, Mark Owen, Will Smith, Meat Loaf, Bad Boys Inc, M People, Apache Indian, Take That, Haddaway (1993)
Win my heart with S-E-X and plenty! Aggggggggh playground trauma D:
#2 Don’t forget ‘Adelante’…OK not actually a hit and markedly different from their other stuff (think 2 In A Room go New Beat) but the haunting synth hook stood out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ7NdoKP8pk
#lamelandmark I think ‘Mr Vain’ was the first song/video I saw on MTV in my own house (we got a Sky dish that Summer), a giant and simultaneously awesome and atrocious window into both European and US pop culture in roughly equal measure (it would take a few years before MTV started to feel much more UK-centric, then literally branded as such). This was about six weeks before it was released over here.
Culture Beat, although new to Popular are no strangers to us. Their dancefloor smash “Der Erdbeermund” (known as “Cherry Lips” here) provided the chassis for Nomad’s “Devotion”. Similarly, “Rhythm Is A Dancer” is the chassis, gearbox and wheels for “Mr Vain”. This is the high water-mark for Culture Beat’s founder, Torsten Fenslau, who tragically died in a car accident before the year was out. Their 2nd album,”Serenity” from which most of their hits came, is well worth a listen.
It isn’t “call him Mr Right or call him Mr Wrong”, then?
I do remember hating this song, but then I was That Age.
Mr Rater, why don’t you tell it like it really is (oh wait, agree with 7).
I always thought it was ‘Call him Mr Vader, call him Mr Wrong’.
Anyway, this was one of those songs I changed my mind about during its chart run. Hated it at first, dismissed them as a Tesco Value 2 Unlimited. By the time it had completed its run at Number One, I was in love with its daft charms.
Actually Clock were the Tesco Value 2 Unlimited, weren’t they?
#10 Asda, more like. I always presumed the “l” was a typo”
This was good, but still a big comedown from Der Erdbeermund
“World In Your Hands” was wonderful, but the whole production style rapidly became as generic as David GUetta’s has now (down, down, angry impatient bunny). Exhibit A – Corona.
Another single I don’t actually remember getting to number one – in my memory, it was a number two or number three hit. Strange.
Like a great many of the records issued throughout 1993, I just can’t find much either interesting or positive to say about this – it just is. I’ve always maintained that 1993 was a uniquely dreary year for music in all of its genres and forms, and I’ve been consistently corrected on that point by friends who claim that this view probably has little to do with what was being issued at the time and more to do with the fact that it wasn’t an incredibly upbeat year for me personally. I can see I’m probably going to be sitting a lot of these records out comments-wise.
#11 But Corona usually had a bit of Housey piano chucked in! SO different!
I do think today’s somewhat oppressive Guettarama is different as he is both so dominant (or at least relentlessly prolific) as an individual compared to the pre-superstar DJ relatively anonymous equivalents of 20 years ago (e.g. Mr Cappella…what did he look like? nobody cares and that’s fine) in addition to spawning the copycats.
Is it about cocaine replacing ecstasy in clubs? That would make sense of the lyrics.
I loved this as, as a late adopter, I was still bang on da Eurobeat ting in 1993.
I was also struck by the lust-as-vanity message of the lyrics: a couple of years before I had seen Disney’s Beauty and The Beast at the pictures and recounting the entire plot to my mum in that childlike way, described Gaston as ‘this man, who’s really vain and all the girls fancy him, but he wants the only one who doesn’t.’ I distinctly recall her saying ‘yes, vain people always want the one they can’t have’. It must have stuck with me because two years’ later ‘I want you coz I am Mr Vain’ made perfect sense.
I spose so, but, hmm, well Capella had an anti-Capella, who sounded near enough identical….
Whereas whoever the anti-Guetta is has already presumably made a record with Guetta.
Guetta thinks of himself as bringing back faceless PLUR values I believe!
# 12 Completely with you on this – the only thing I can remember about it is a Crimewatch reconstruction where some old dear who got murdered was buying it for her grandson.
Oh but I’m forgetting this was also the inspiration for Virgin Radio’s reactionary but very funny “Mr Bong” ad ; this was just about when I started tuning in to them.
There was some good stuff around in 1993; it just wasn’t selling.
Given that Revolution In The Head was first published in 1994, and therefore must have been written, at least in part, during 1993, it is possible that Ian MacDonald may have had “Mr Vain” in mind when he snarls in his introduction at then-contemporary pop which in his view had been reduced to “little more than a soundtrack for physical jerks.” That wouldn’t in itself have necessarily made his premise wrongheaded, but one can very briefly glimpse, if not grasp, his point (there were plenty of counter-arguments at the time, and also subsequently). 1993’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer,” down to sharing the same bpm and practically the same tune, “Mr Vain” was another Teutonic studium dance epic, and even though it tries to debunk itself in its stodgy process (“Loveless dying/For a chance just to touch a hand”), the now wearily predictable combination of “soulful” female lead vocal and “gruff” male “rap” (“One sexy can’t perplex me now” – answers on a postcard, please) is reminiscent of nothing less than an updated, and possibly even more dated-sounding, Boney M.
“Mr Vain”’s principal significance is that it was the first number one single since the fifties not to be released on seven-inch vinyl (it appeared in both CD and cassette form) and thus helped shift the earth for the eventual burial of one mode of pop delivery. Many of my contemporaries of the period read that as a signal to begin drifting away from pop altogether, and the record’s run at the top coincided with a personal (work-related) life change to do with things closing down and other things starting; nevertheless, “Mr Vain” does close more than one book.
So what was the last record to make number 1 purely on 7″ sales?
The last ‘hit’ I remember as such was DurDur’s “View to a Kill”, which oddly only came out on 7″, oddly as they were multiformatted from their first single. Of course, there have been later ‘special’ issues as such, The Wedding Present of course..
I think The Who had the first “also available on..”
#17 – Yes, there was the odd good album around, but in terms of the stuff that seemed ubiquitous there was little of value to me. In the sixth form common room it was wall-to-wall grunge dirges about how alienating and depressing being alive was, and on Radio One it was either the likes of this, a track Punctum summarises incredibly well above, or whatever MOR track they’d backed that month. I just have distinct memories of going to both mainstream and alternative clubs in 1993 and feeling bored out of my skull, wondering if this was really what being a teenager of legal drinking (and therefore partying) age should feel like. I still want my money back.
I realise things aren’t ever quite as straightforward as this and that life doesn’t work to neat chapter headings and cut-off points, but you could view 93 as being a watershed year. Certainly it was the year that Bannister took over Radio One (in October) which led to massive changes at the station, it was also the year that Suede properly broke and put the wheels in motion for Britpop (though that could possibly be regarded as a negative shift), and the template for a lot of sophisticated and inventive mainstream Dance music was also being set (I think Leftfield are strangely under-referenced these days, for example). Stuff was bubbling under, but London and the South East didn’t feel particularly vibrant at the time, events always seemed half-attended, and there was a heavy sense of pessimism about the state of the British music industry. Indeed, one question on my Media Studies A Level exam paper that year was on whether the British music industry could ever be revived, and if so how? I did answer it, but I can’t remember much at all about what I put – except that I chose to take a positive tack – but my result was an “A” so it must have made some kind of sense, even though I was probably hopelessly wrong with my predictions.
I like this but don’t have much more to say about it.
Re 18: a pedant writes, Rhythm Is A Dancer has a much lower bpm, though as mentioned upthread it’s clearly the basis for Mr Vain.
Punctum, any idea which was the previous no.1 not to have been on 7″? My money’s on Lonnie Donegan’s Gamblin’ Man/Putting On The Style, though it was on an EP (ditto Alma C’s Dreamboat).
Last no.1 on 7″ only? I reckon it might be a charity record. Ferry Aid? (note: The Stonk, Bring Your Daughter… and ALL THREE Jive Bunny no.1s were on 12″ ferchrissakes)
Immense indifference. This is very much of its time. I suspect it sounded very ’92 in 93.
@17, 20. Zooropa, Debut, Siamese Dream, In Utero sold tons and were all excellent, as was Exile in Guyville. Suede’s album was a let down after the singles, Pablo Honey was much better than everyone said. Kate Bush laid an egg. The Abba awakening was in full swing. Dre’s entrancing, frightening The Chronic was everywhere all summer in 1993 in the US (That it didn’t chart *at all* in the UK strikes me as bizarre. How is that even possible?). The Breeders’ Cannonball, Underworld’s Dirty Epic, Slowdive’s When the Sun Hits? MTV felt rather exciting at the time as I recall…
It charted odd weeks between 2000 and 2004, highest being at 43 in 2004, but yeah.
Probably because it sold a lot over a very long time period.
#24 – I loathed “In Utero” and absolutely despised “Siamese Dream”, so you’re talking to the wrong person here! Meanwhile, I’ve never listened to “Zooropa” from start to finish, but probably should get around to doing that soon.
There definitely was stuff going on in 1993, but if I’d picked any other year in the nineties I’m sure you’d have been able to rattle off a longer list than that, and you wouldn’t have mentioned a revival in the process (but yes, Suede’s debut album was disappointing – I put so much hope in that, too).
@24, 25 – A chronic seller rather than an acute one, then.
A taxonomy of 1993 https://popular-number1s.com/ft/2012/05/1993-the-love-post/
@26, 23daves. Heh, I know Billy Corgan is pretty all-around hateable/embarrassing, but I’m surprised that any teen or college-age person could dismiss all of Siamese Dream. Especially the more stretched out, jammed tracks like Hummer and Mayonnaise just seem dialed in (in a Floyd-y, Zep-y way) on what those years feel like (at least some of the time). Great roadtrip music… Your dig about my mentioning the Abba awakening is fair enough, but it really meant a lot to me at the time! Would other years be much easier to formulate a quick what-I-was-listening-to-so-shoot-me-list for? Maybe.
Anyhow, what of Mr Vain? Punctum’s said about all that needs to be said I find. A routine record (that honestly sounds like it was knocked out in about 30 minutes pro-tooling of Rhythm is A Dancer) that kind of makes makes me despair about people and pop somewhat out of proportion to the music itself. Need to listen to some Earth Wind and Fire to cheer myself up…
#22: “Dreamboat” is right; I don’t remember a 12-inch or CD of the 1989 “Ferry ‘Cross The Mersey” (unless it also came out on cassette grr!).
“Discogs” website has a 12″ version of the Ferry Aid single. (So does Wikipedia, but you know..)
Fairly sure “Ferry Cross The Mersey” had a cassette single – all those sales at Woolworths to mop up!
best song of 1993 in my Sixth Form Common Room then: “Alright” by Urban Soul. Wrongly overlooked by the wider world and probably largely forgotten now.
As for 1993: the Love Post. Hmm. Carter USM’s follow-up album (to 1992: etc) in 93 was a big, big, disappointment, and really didn’t warrant repeated listening at all. It was the year I went to university and more or less lost contact with pop music and popular culture (beyond what could be heard on Radio Tay…) – but so much of it was dire at this time – it was a very worthwhile break, and a good time to take such an interlude.
It took a while but I think I’ve worked out why I don’t rate this as highly as some others here (not to say it’s not reasonable, it’s decent enough in a gonzo, fast paced sort of way). I think it’s because I prefer the formula the other way around – if Eurodance is “urgent beats, big-voiced singers, a rap somewhere in the middle to change up the pace”, I think I prefer it when the beats are more laid back (or at least not as rapid), the rap the main focus and the big voices coming in to break it up (the US seem to have cornered the market for this in the early 90s with stuff like Bust a Move by Young MC, Things That Make You Go Hmmm and, in 1994, En Vogue/Salt N Pepa’s Whatta Man).
Mr Vain is OK as things go. Unfortunately, the stuff that’s the other way around didn’t get to #1 here. Never mind.
Another song that has memories for me but in a completely different era to when it was released. Not the 4 year old me of 1993, but the 15 year old of 2004, discovering this at the same time as ‘3am Eternal’, ‘Rhythm is a Dancer’ and most other number 1s of the early 90s. Like The KLF and Snap this totally blew me away, utterly exhilerating and made me wonder just what the hell happened in the intervening eleven years for music to become so dull. It’s picked up again since 2009, but that’s another story.
The mix heard on the video is different to the radio edit, to my slight disappointment when I downloaded the mp3 – the video mix starts with that epic synth riff, while the ‘Special Radio Edit’ (even though it appears to be the only radio edit) starts with something much more watered down and duller, not kicking in until the second chorus. Happily the 12″ mix starts the same as the video, so if I was truly bothered I’d edit them together.
Definitely a 9 for me!
Yeah the radio edit’s replacement sound was like a weaker marimba preset and not as good.
Cumbrian what you describe as a preference sounds like stuff that bases its template around Hip-Hop, then incoporating other genre’s elements/associations whereas for Eurodance the starting point is House/Techno (into which rap had been incorporated since the beginning anyway really albeit differently).
You could recreate almost exactly Mr Vain’s string synth sound on a Yamaha PSR-400 (cute and far more affordable ‘my first synth’ type product for youngsters, alas I didn’t get the one with the little blue drum pads below the keyboard as that was like £50 more) but I’m sure theirs didn’t come from the same kit.
Unlike KLF and Snap #1’s ‘Mr Vain’ doesn’t have an instrumental melodic middle eight. It also lacks quite the same sense of menace/mystery as them despite its subject and the faster, more hostile rap – but it does seem more dancefloor-focussed than them which is the trade-off I guess.
Dearie me. All these years I’ve disliked this song for what I thought was the incongruity of having a female vocalist singing “I am Mr Vain”, not realising until now that she’s quoting the man. I’d not noticed the “He’d say” before the main vocal hook.
As shown by my thinking Take That were singing “All I do is shine this thing,” I really must pay closer attention.
Upgrading from a 3 to a 5.
32 Urban Soul’s ‘Alright ‘ had already been overlooked by the time of this number 1 as it was first heard in clubs at the end of 1990 and was a minor pop hit in early 1991.
@37 hmm, that’s a good point. (Chart peak of no 43 on – was it its third release? – in September 1991) Clearly it lived on in someone’s CD collection in my sixth form…
#36 I made the same mistake and am now slightly disappointed to learn that the singer is merely quoting the song’s subject.
Having been ten at the time my affection for this may be more Proustian than musicological, but I think I like it as much as most of the other dark pop house things from around this time, and more than ‘Rhythm is a Dancer’, which made no impression on me then and holds for me now none of the cheap mystery that this retains.
Slightly weird posting schedule coming up as I’m about to go off to Berlin. I’ll get the next one up tomorrow, but there might be a gap to Thursday after that.
It’s OK I suppose, and if it were to be played at a wedding reception or whatever I’d bop along to it without any great enthusiasm. The moment that lifts it more than anything else for me is the crescendo building up beneath the second rap section. Otherwise it’s pretty standard – at least for the present: you could certainly imagine something like this being released this month.
No need to keep us informed about upcoming post times, Tom – we know they’re coming sometime and we can wait (unless it’s self-motivation!)
Nobody’s done a #2 watch, so here goes … one week of the previous incumbent, then two of Bitty McLean “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears from my Eyes)” – then, rather more cruelly to my mind, the Pet Shop Boys glorious rendition of “Go West.” Surely the last time they got anywhere near a number one. Radiohead’s “Creep” entered the chart at #7 in the last week of Mr Vain’s reign, its peak position and only week, surprisingly, in the top ten. Culture Beat had several follow-up hits, including “Got to get it” (#4) and “Anything” (#5) which have utterly escaped my memory, and I’m in no hurry to have it refreshed. A later top 30 hit came with “Crying in the Rain”, surely not the old Everly Brothers number, although that might be worth hearing.
“Go West” would have gone top had it not been leapfrogged by the next Popular entry.
Am finding it funny that all the songs I despised at the time, I adore now. I suppose it didn’t help that my stepfather took a liking to this and sang it repeatedly for most of our 1993 family package holiday to Portugal *runs off to the Global Wizzy Club to watch Dumb and Dumber dubbed into Portuguese*
This IS great. It’s an 8. It’s no Anything, or World In Your Hands, but it is one of the better number ones of 1993.
I love them dearly, but PSB deserved a number two with Go West. Surprisingly straight in at 2, then off. That is the PSB way. I wouldn’t have wanted the last PSB number one to be a slightly cynical cover version, when at least Heart was something they wrote, and the downturn was a year away.*
*Yes, I know, Always On My Mind was a slightly cynical cover. But that was in the Imperial Phase. Not even slightly desperate.
culture beat, nietzkov, whigfield
An 8 from me for this, but not the main reason I’m posting.
Just wondered if anyone could please help me: no, I’m not reporting a nasty boil on one’s nether regions, I’m looking for some good and detailed music literature on the Culture Beat/Cappella/Captain Hollywood Project era. Simon Reynolds’ Energy Flash covers jungle, garage, trance and any club genre you could name brilliantly and concisely, apart from Eurodance. Anyone got any good writing on it, positive or negative? I’d be particularly interested to see how people from the late-eighties rave scene perceived things like this. Maybe as if it was a claret and blue shirt in the Millwall home end, but hey, hostility is interesting
It’s mostly because I’m trying to write a few novels/plays/independent films with Mr. Vain-type music as the soundtracks, but about that, for now I will keep schtum
Disliked it at the time as a blatant and cynical- and less forgivably, second rate- ripoff of “Rhythm is a Dancer”. Can’t say there’s much there to change my mind twenty years later.
The only thing to be said in its favour is that it doesn’t feature any lines as godawful as “I’m as serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer”.
Okay… that *is* a large plus point, but this is still a Tesco Value “Rhythm”. (Sorry Will (#10)… right sentiment, wrong band!)
#23, Anto; “I suspect it sounded very ’92 in 93.” One might suspect this was due to its similarity to a major 1992 hit.
it’s not almost a good pop record it IS a good pop record. Much better than all the grunge drivel around at the time
Another appealing, pumping dance tune at #1. This gets an 8 from me.