The Great British Public has a long and warm relationship with smut – stuff that is somehow about sex without making anyone actually want to do it. A part of our national psyche is forever a 12-year-old boy. As times and manners change, the balance between cheekiness and directness has tipped, from seaside postcards and George Formby to Judge Dread and Roy “Chubby” Brown. The itch remains the same – show us something naughty. So it’s not that surprising that the Outhere Brothers (debut single: “Pass The Toilet Paper”) wind up with two number ones.
If the urges the Outheres appealed to were age-old, the ways radio dealt with them had changed. Blackouts and bans were counter-productive, and left the station on the wrong side of most arguments. The preferred solution? Radio edits – or, as in this case, full radio remixes. Which led to the odd situation that the record on the radio and in the chart wasn’t at all the one people had been hearing in the clubs and buying. That hefty call-to-arms of “Wiggle Wiggle!” aside, the original mix and the radio edit are strikingly different*, and if all you heard was the hit, the track’s filthiness might come as a wicked surprise.
The differences between the mixes go further than cleaning up the lyrics. The “Eskimo Nell” style call-and-response on the full version – “Put your lips on my face!” &c – is the track’s most unusual, though crudest, idea: the UK radio edit drops it for more wiggling. Its directness gets replaced by an in-your-face blurt of a synth riff, an addition which shifts the track into more familiar, ravey territory. Unfortunately that comes at the expense of the original’s clicky, chunky, nicely loping house beat, which was the best thing about it.
The worst thing about “Don’t Stop” remains whatever the version: Keith Mayberry’s hoarse, range-free bellow. It’s all strain, no fun – it’s just a man yelling at you about genitals. For that first ten seconds or so it’s effective – a foghorn cutting through anything else on the airwaves. But that’s all the song does. Or to put it another way, “Don’t Stop” shoots its load far too quickly and ends up an awkward mess.
*Very Boring Clarification: I didn’t hear this on the radio, so I’m assuming the version played is the 3’06” “Townhouse Radio Edit” that was Track 1 on the UK CD and ended up on Now 30, which leaves off the call-and-response verses. There is also a full but clean version, which keeps the verses but switches “pussy” for “kisses”. And of course the original version, which I heard played out. I expect we’ll have more ambiguities like this as Popular picks its way through the CD single age. Meanwhile knowing the different version of Outhere Brothers hits is my cross to bear.
Score: 4
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I was trying to work out why the beat on the original mix was likeable, and I have – it reminds me of Deep Dish’s production on De’Lacy’s “Hideaway”, which only got to #9 but is probably my favourite single of 1995.
I only know the radio edit to this. Further research necessary.
The naughty mix is quite hard to find on YT – the cleaned-up kisses one is the one on the (presumably) official OB account.
Obviously I may be quite wrong about the impetus behind it doing well in the charts – but definitely the dirty version was the one I ‘heard out’ so to speak.
Further research completed (watches video on YouTube). It’s “I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor” with the addition of boxing glamour models and baby oil. I’m surprised a song about cunnilingus got to #1 as early as 1995. Unless somebody knows different of course.
The ‘smut-craving Brits’ idea is worth more probing as it suggests other sexually explicit dance tracks could’ve done as well between this and ‘French Kiss’ (which is a bit of a different thing again what with no actual sexual swearwords uttered) – particularly in Hip Hop.
But hardcore content usually came with hardcore or less compromising music and I guess ‘Don’t Stop’s bouncy house tempo and somewhat misleading cartoon video gave it more commercial appeal over 2 Live Crew and the like (although apparently ‘Me So Horny’ did reach #1 in the Netherlands?) pulling people in initially unaware of its lurid underbelly. It took me a few weeks after it reaching #1 to hear the latter too so was puzzled by its popularity at first.
re #1 ‘Hideaway’ one of my favourites of the year too. 1995 is the year I threw myself into US House properly beyond just the hits so it was fun getting into these things weeks and months before they hit the charts thanks to, in particular, listening to Kiss 100 constantly (including in the stockroom on Saturdays working in the local branch of Iceland) plus Tongy on Friday nights and my favourite read at the time the newly launched Muzik magazine.
Another case where I was baffled by the track’s popularity when it came out, only this time 18 years has done nothing to clear up the mystery. That bellow is just a horrible, unpleasant sound, and I have no desire to hear it again and again and again.
I don’t rate this much and I actually like goofy stadium house (heh, and guessing at dance categories is always risky). I didn’t know it had a Naughty Lyrics side.
“French Kiss” is brilliant, though (and the random guessometer hits “minimalist techno”)
#5 Dunno if “French Kiss” quite fits my impromptu definition of ‘smut’ – mind you the lines of intent and effect are always terribly blurred with sexy music: one man’s oyster is another man’s Partridge.
Haven’t listened to it yet but good Christ that sleeve is dismal.
Sample watch- this track contains samples of: “I wanna rock” by luke and “wiggle wiggle” by disco rick and the wolf pack.
#4 Whether it got to number one is a moot point (those who were there at the time know damned well it did!) but I’m pretty sure that Please Please Me was a thinly-veiled “I licked your fanny now you suck my dick” song. Just the sort of thing that Lennon would try to get under the noses of the prim.
“hoarse, range-free bellow”. Spot on. Ugh. [3]
I can’t believe the original lasts four-and-a-half bloody minutes.
#8 Yeah I made the comparison just cos of the similar explicit factor really – French Kiss seemed more like an unintended smash hit than this although I doubt the O Bros had planned on making an impact this big this quickly either. They may have had 2 In A Room in mind as an antecdent and anticipated at least hit on the level of ‘Wiggle It’.
Like the smut definition tho – applies to a lot of both US and European dance ‘about sex but not sexy’ (including T-Spoon’s ‘Sex On The Beach’ from ’98 – the Dutch at it again).
Maybe this ties in with UK takes on disco. Behind it all is the wider question of why the sexually overt or explicit in pop has never really been mined successfully (both commercially and lyrically – ie sans ‘smut’) in British pop (by anyone regardless of class or ethnicity) where most people’s exposure to such things in the last 25 years comes primarily from uninhibited US Hip Hop and R&B.
Terrible, terrible, record. Although there may be something more recent I don’t know, or something remarkably dull from the 1950s that had escaped my recollection after having heard it as part of a Popular-inspired Number Ones Binge, I am really hard pressed to think of a more…unnecessary (would be one adjective) number one than this, 1952-2013.
Not sure when I discovered the difference between the radio version (which, in fact, has a certain, bouncy, charm, basically because much of the content of the track has been removed) and the “real” version, which is one long stream of unpleasant, unnecessary things, one after another. Gosh, he said “pussy”! The “I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor” chanting, the hooting, the uncharming tunelessness. A very inferior relative of “Me So Horny” crossed with “Wiggle It”: and at least NWA, when they were being both sexually crude (e.g. some lyrics in “Gangsta Gangsta” and, and also, in a slightly different way, “Just Don’t Bite It”) at least, sometimes, demonstrated a sense of humour, which is completely lacking here. Oh, he just said “pussy” again. Are You Being Served, sir?
Given the general British tendency to present much to do with sex in the most unsexy way possible, it’s a little odd (and from a different genre of music, but I think the discussion probably fits better here rather than with something more stylistically related later in the year) that the German (?) group E-Rotic (speciality – indeed their only trick: inane, and inanely rhyming, lyrics loosely referring to sex over a no less inane beat) made next to no headway, at least commercially, in the UK. (In nightclubs? I have no idea.)
I was living in South-Eastern Europe: Romania, then Ukraine, from the summer of 95 until the summer of 96, and their music was unavoidable on the radio there): In fact, “Max Don’t Have Sex With Your Ex (It Will Make Your Life Complex)” is the soundtrack to a key part of the groundbreaking 1997 Russian gangster movie “Brat” (“Brother”)…and that seems to be used as a subtle comment on the infiltration of elements of Western culture into post-Soviet Russia… (A drunk Russian harasses a French man at a party, telling him “this American music” is shit, and Russia will take revenge on America soon, occasionally getting a bemused response in French). I suppose its hopelessness made it a little bit more charming than the Outhere Bros’ mindless aggression. Oh, he said “pussy” again. What a man.
And then, also from round about this time, there was “Sin With Sebastian, the Golden Boy” and “Shut Up And Sleep With Me. “Your body I like, your mind not so much”. Also very big in Eastern Europe. And kind of hilariously naff, and far more worthy of listening to than the bloody Outhere Brothers.
I remember reading about this online about a decade ago, knowing none of the actual content of the song but hearing it had “explicit lyrics”…I was so confused when I saw the music video, with its completely clean Townhouse Radio Edit, and spent the next few minutes wondering what on earth 1995 listeners felt so shocking about lyrics such as “Don’t stop moving baby, all you’re doing is drive me crazy”, and, indeed, “Energy! Wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle”, basically the only two lyrics in that edit of the song. It’ll potentially prove highly confusing/misleading for anyone researching old #1 hits just by listening to their radio edits, or just Now That’s What I Call Music albums.
I don’t really have a desire to hear the explicit version but I’ve always quite enjoyed said Townhouse edit, a fun if simple bit of mid-90s Eurodance. Certainly wouldn’t have got #1 without the ruder edit though and probably wouldn’t have charted higher than about #26, unlike a future Outhere song it’s not quite got enough hooks for the clean version to truly have a life of its own…
both the record and the controversy passed me by at the time but I don’t mind this. His voice sounds processed in the versions I’ve watched which makes it part of the texture of the song. 5 for me
#11 Rosie, The Beatles were being awfully coy, but yeah I get the gist from PPM’s lyrics there was a favour for a favour required.
#11 and #4, yeah was going to add that one..
Did anyone ever ask Lennon about that one? Then again, I doubt he’d deny it even if it wasn’t true..
According to Revolution In The Head, PPM’s lyric was “widely interpreted as an exhortation to fellatio” and this was largely what led Capitol in the US to reject the single (it got a release there through some small Chicago label and for that reason didn’t chart in the US until after the dam burst for the Beatles in 1964, at which point it went top 5 – indeed it was #5 in the sainted week of April 4 1964 when The Beatles held all top 5 singles in the US).
Outhere Brothers: bloody hell. Makes 2 Live Crew’s Kraftwerk/dick record seem like a beast by comparison.
If this is the sort of thing cunnilingus inspires, even the most generous of lovers must be given pause for thought. Horrendous.
I do not remember any great call for a fusion of 2 Unlimited and 2 Live Crew in 1995, but Chicago’s Outhere Brothers broke through, or broke in, with a link which may have been better left missing. There was the predictable controversy about “naughty lyrics” although how “naughty” could be deemed interchangeable with “tiresomely offensive” when it comes to lines like “Girl you got to suck my dick/And you got to suck it quick” is beyond me.
For radio the track was reworked to such a degree that it became a virtual instrumental, its uninteresting purloined “Tainted Love” riff hammered into foursquare dance treadmill fascism, topped by a dog whistle chant of “Don’t Stop Movin’ Baby Only Booties Drive Me Crazy” and repeat ad nemesis for the next three minutes. Where “Relax” winked to us to come and join in, and the Beastie Boys of Licensed To Ill were patently and astutely aware of their own geeky absurdity, “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” (in the wake of “Wiggle It” by 2 In A Room) was pretty much the “Ernie” or “The Streak” of its day. And, ghastily, this wasn’t the end of it, or them; “For all you motherfuckers who get enough,” they sneer, “We’re coming back” – and they were as good as their word.
Massively influential. LMFAO in particular owe these pioneers a huge debt.
Is there any other example of a US act having two number ones here while failing to have any kind of chart success at home? (one bunnied single at #65 and no other chart entries)
I’d be interested generally to hear an American perspective on the Outhere phenomenon – have they heard of them? Do they understand the appeal?
#22 Only partly, although there’s the green shoots of Ghetto House/Juke poking out of the soil with this song. I don’t know why US frat-boys didn’t go nuts for this (or if they did, they made no dent in the Billboard Chart with it).
Like weej @23 says, we need some American perspective.
#23 Funny you should ask. I can think of a lot of American acts with one UK#1 and little success at home, but I’m having trouble thinking of someone with two UK#1’s. I’m sure there’s someone though – the “popular overseas, not at home” phenomenon seems to be more common going eastward than the other way around (Trivia fact: The Escape Club are the only UK group with a US#1 without ever having a UK hit of any kind).
As far as the Outhere Brothers go, I have some recollection of the clean version of the bunnied single getting US airplay (not a lot though), but no version of Wiggle. I would definitely say they’re not well known here. I watched the music video of the clean version of Wiggle for the first time a few days ago, and I have no desire to listen again, nor hear the dirty version. I’m no prude, but being raunchy just for the sake of being raunchy without putting any effort into the actual music just doesn’t do it for me.
Nine years old at the time, much more familiar with the radio edit, far superior to the clean/dirty versions with the lolloping house beat (oddly I’m also a big Hideaway fan), but still sorely lacking in charm and a sense of free-spirited abandon compared to the absolute, ahem, BANGERS on this album I got for my tenth birthday 18 years ago this week (though it also contains some of the most pointless tracks of all time.)
I’ll talk more about this later; though obviously the Norman Cook track shouldn’t have been Pizzaman but Freak Power – Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out… what’s not to like about acid jazz meets War’s Low Rider by way of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?
http://www.discogs.com/Various-Dance-Heat-95/release/358811
Only realised yesterday the lyrics aren’t “All you do is drive me crazy” but “All that booty drives me crazy.” I’ll knock a point off it for that. Oh, do piss off back to MTV Spring Break. Maybe I’m being a bit unfair on the Outhere Brothers – everyone deserves a second chance…. :laughs like Muttley:
2.
The sleeve is indeed dreadful, but it’s still better than the song. I only ever heard the radio edit and had no wish to investigate further. The sort of Number One which, though its reign was mercifully brief, made me wonder whether I was getting too old to listen to the Top 40, or to Radio 1. A 2, and that’s only because the weather has put me in a good mood.
Bit of a retro feel to the Top 20 around this time, incidentally, with the Beatles charting with ‘Baby It’s You’ from the ‘at the BBC’ album, and new hits from the Human League and Simple Minds.
‘Ever read the comments on Freakytrigger and think you must be listening to a different record to the other posters? Well in this case I was, namely, 2 In A Room’s Wiggle It, a slice of charming of pop-rave which beats both the clean and dirty versions of this track. I’m surprised that it’s only taken until 1995 for a record’s rise, stay at the top and descent to pass me by entirely.
Another vote for Hideaway, a record I only really “got” one Saturday afternoon, after hearing it on the Dry bar’s (no doubt ruinously expensive) soundsystem.
#23 and #25 The Walker Brothers were an American act with two UK number 1s in the mid 1960s, but with little chart success in the USA.
The explicit version of this was doing the rounds of my secondary school months ahead of the clean version’s chart-topping feats. Away from the rock and indie fans, the most popular sounds of the time in this school on the outskirts of Glasgow were home-made compilations featuring plenty of rave/tartan techno by the likes of QFX and Ultrasonic. This seemed to be popular with the same crowd and there was much sniggering about the lyrics in the corners of the playground. It was a bit like the musical equivalent of a few pages of a discarded jazz mag someone had found under a hedge.
After the initial fad passed, I expected never to hear anything of it again, as the music favoured by the techno tape afficianados never troubled the charts (presumably much of it was originally taped off vinyl as it was a complete mystery to me at the time where much of it came from). Alas, the neutered version arrived in the charts eventually.
Since the Outhere Brothers album(!) had alredy been released in 1994 I wonder how the school cassette tapers originally picked up on this? Compared to the emerging trend of the time for slicker marketing, straight in at number one singles etc. this seems an old-fashioned slow emergence from pop’s sweaty underbelly in comparison.
I’m now almost 33 years old and haven’t been brave enough to re-listen to this yet.
Out Here Brothers? Ou There Brothers?
Either way, ou.
Scott Outhere’s later solo releases are amazing, of course.
#14
“Oh, he just said “pussy” again. Are You Being Served, sir?”
Does that make this the straight version of Scooch’s “Flying The Flag (For You)”? (Although there’s a good argument that the main problem with the Scooch track is that it’s so very terribly heterosexual.)
#29 – Yeah, The Walker Brothers were my first thought, but both their UK number ones went top 20 in the USA. Not big hits, but still much better than The Outhere Brothers (what is it about ‘The (Something) Brothers’ who aren’t really brothers?)
I fear we are moving into the era of “hey, did you see what I did there? I said “fuck”! Isn’t that so fucking cool of me? There, I did it again! How edgy is that man!”
[yawns]
[listens to Apeman by the Kinks]
Not to suggest this is remotely up to the same standard in any way at all, but there’d been a tradition of openly blue recorded black comedy music in the US since at least the 1970s*: Red Foxx is probably the best-known name (Chris Rock cites him as an inspiration).**
*And these are from the 1940s: but of course they couldn’t even be sold over the counter, let alone enter the charts (if charts had been invented yet).
**(Curiously — since it surely has to be a coincidence, unless the OBs are much subtler scholars than seems likely — Foxx’s own very first release, a 78 for Savoy in 1946, jump boogie-style, is called “let’s wiggle a little woogie“)
Given how open explicit language was commonplace within rap-orientated dance at the time it’s only the curious crossover of ‘Don’t Stop’ that makes this seem shocking to anyone surely.
They weren’t trying to shock or impress outsiders. Their ‘regular guys on the street’ image supports this I think – being more House than Hip Hop they couldn’t go about it on a gangsta lean either. This was almost refreshing in a way. Younger lads might’ve liked them for the rudeness but probably not as much as countless thug rappers at the time.
That’s to defend the OB’s stance rather than the music itself which was average fare for House blurring its Euro and Latin influences.
But I quite liked their third UK single ‘La La La Hey Hey’ because within it were some stronger euphoric elements and it was quite a swerve away from the naughtiness quotient of their previous hits (subsequently doing worse business in the charts).
It’s a long time since I checked this — think it’s in Toop’s landmark early 80s book — but didn’t some of the super-early HipHop DJs use Red Foxx as a sample-scratch material? The ground of their sonic landscape was basically their parents’ LPs (or haha poss their own in DJ Kool Herc’s case, as he is five years older than me; and actually Bambaata is three years older).
Andrew Ridgeley, Blink 182, Carter USM, The Outhere Brothers.
Face it, grown men in shorts are always a warning.
#39 – now if *that* were the support line-up for the Friday Stone Roses gig…
“West Coast Americans gave ska a bad name. Grown men in shorts”
As said the Dead 60s in 2005.
Remember them?
The first number 1 of my time that caused controversy.Was 12 when this was released so its infamy was immediate but in the pre-internet era it was hard to find anything other than the radio friendly hit. To this day I havent heard much of the x-rated takes and youtube is hostile towards it so Ill have to make do with the original.
The radio edit it is and 18 years after its still as shoddy today.I’ll confess that I liked it for about a day or two back in 95 but its appeal faded very quickly.Looking back at the video now its clear that the video editing had almost totally changed any trace of smut and the old animation footage looks like something you’d get when a tv transmission was interrupted.
I’m lost for words that this got a 4.A 2 at best (Borderline 1).DS(WW) is utterly dire which gets as bad every year and even the furore over it only detracts from what a lousy record it is.Thankfully the parties around the time had records like guaglione and alright to fall back on so this was banished very quickly.Unlike another big hitter from hula and malik…
There’s mediocre, and then there’s poor. And then there’s really poor. And then there’s crap. And then there’s total shite. And then there’s “no redeeming virtues whatsoever”. And then there’s this record. Way worse than your Little Jimmys and St Winifreds, which you can imagine some people finding quite sweet, this belongs in a special category where long before the end of the track you feel the overwhelming urge to do physical harm to the people responsible.
A few years ago I organised a poll at work for people’s top ten and bottom ten Number Ones, and placed this third in my bottom ten (hur, hur – he said “bottom”). The top two were an equally charmless bunnied hit by a fat bloke in 2003, and an amphibian ringtone. Yes, this record is THAT bad.
This hit the top spot just after I turned 13, and I was therefore its target audience. It did the rounds at school, and even now it’s pretty…meh. That said, I will always have a soft spot for daft swearing, and the tune is nicely bouncy. Four is about right.
#41 I remember the Dead 60s. Their first album is one of my favourite ever!
Since I was previously unaware of the charms of this piece I have just wasted ten minutes of my life finding it, and its bunnied successor, to find out just what it was all about. Oh my GAAAAAAAHD!
It sounds like sex from the point of view of a pustular psychopath who has read about sex in a mucky book but has no clue what it’s really about. Richard Thompson’s “Read About Love” from a couple of years earlier has the type nailed. Far from the reasonably authentic sounds of coition we’ve already had at number one (complete with radio-friendly mix) this is more on the level of Flanders & Swann’s Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers. Only without the sophisticated wit of course.
#37 yes, it wasn’t intended to “shock”, it had shock thrust upon it (erm). The problem isn’t the filth, it’s the tedium* – which may be why it hit big here and more salacious/believable sex raps didn’t.
*why do I like DJ Assault and not the Outhere Brothers? is a good question, though, maybe one for another comment.
Re: #45 ‘Twas pretty good. I’m one of the only people on the planet who own the second Dead 60s album, as well as the second New Young Pony Club one!
Re: #42 Guaglione. Oh god hahaha. The Guinness ad song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MuEtGPXLPI
Apart from murdering Buffalo Stance, Dirty Cash and Merry Xmas Everybody (last summer!) on a camping stag do after necking a bottle of rum, impersonating the dance here at my 10th birthday party was the time I’ve disgraced myself most musically. It’s probably alright but I don’t dare listen to it again as the last time I heard it, it was the soundtrack to some haggard old men doing a striptease with balloons on Shameless (calm down, I only watch that show for Karen Maguire and her dark, smokey, understated accent.)
#47 You like DJ Assault because there’s no compromise probably? It’s strictly hardcore/underground and so tends to be sonically more visceral.
#49 also it’s quite funny.