It became a favourite when they later toured the UK—because concert goers remembered The Wurzels’ 1976 parody.

Following the January 1994 attack on US figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, a parody of “Brand New Key” circulated on US radio stations. You need a strong stomach to listen to it even now: the mix of banjos, fiddles and heavy synths makes me feel very tense, something the horse and gunshot sound effects don’t do much to alleviate, while the aggressive chanting makes me wonder if hell is actually being locked in an eternal barn dance. It’s actually just as sex-obsessed as ‘I’m Too Sexy’ – love as a ‘contact sport’ ( let the neighbours talk) – but also has a swing at being romantic.

The video builds on this theme – I’m genuinely not sure if they were going for something funny, or for something more like a horror movie. Ray Stevens has had an amazing career beginning in 1958 and, believe it or not, continuing through to this very day. As with Alice Cooper, and Marilyn Manson (two artists to whom I didn’t expect to be drawing a comparison today) people make the mistake of referring to Whigfield as the singer rather than the band (or ‘musical project’ as Wikipedia refers to them).

I can’t think of many dance tracks that sampled pre-rock and roll music before Doop, but I can think of a few that came afterwards, including at least a couple of number ones. Between the Battle of Britpop and that time every British person with an internet connection bought a dozen copies of an 18-year-old Rage Against The Machine song to piss off Simon Cowell in 2009, the UK has made a habit over the years of dragging the weirdest songs to the front of the public consciousness and leaving them there to fester for just a bit too long.Novelty songs are seldom serious music, but what they have going for them is fun or, perhaps, a bit of a shock factor.

It was 1971 and Everything Is Beautiful won the award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for Ray and the award for Best Inspirational Performance for Jake Hess. Jilted John was, in fact, Sheffield-born Graham David Fellows, a drama student at Manchester Polytechnic who after his initial success as the embittered teenager whose girlfriend Julie had left him for another man named Gordon, later morphed into the equally comic (and much longer lasting) character John Shuttleworth. We had Good Old Arsenal (1971 double team), Blue Is The Colour (Chelsea’s 1972 League Cup final team), I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles (West Ham’s 1975 FA Cup final team) and We Can Do It (Liverpool’s 1977 side). I think another reason writing this post didn’t bring about a warm Proustian glow is that my repeated plays of ‘Saturday Night’ have reminded me of the dance routine. Formed in Ohio in 1970, Wild Cherry were initially a hard rock band, but they decided to broaden their musical palette when disco exploded later in the decade.noted for portraying characters of specific ethnicity or those finding themselves in certain comic or melodramatic situations, . From the alliterative title, to the springy acoustic rhythm, to the brass section that comes blasting in mid-way through. The fact that this does almost work as a pop song is probably down to the alleged involvement of Michael Jackson. As a sidebar Fellows appeared in Coronation Street as Les Charlton, a young biker chasing the affections of married Gail Platt (then Tilsley).