Spice doesn't need to be original to be entertaining, nor do the Spice Girls need to be good singers. It just has to be executed well, and the innocuous dance-pop of Spice is infectious. None of the Girls have great voices, but they do exude personality and charisma, which is what drives bouncy dance-pop like "Wannabe," with its ridiculous "zig-a ...
Fame can be a fleeting mistress, and nowhere more so than in the land of dance-pop divas. Many are lucky enough to have a hit album, much less two or three. What usually takes a one-hit wonder from the singles charts to career diva lies less in catchy hooks than in a combination of talent and the choice of collaborators. Obviously, the master of ...
Prior to the release of their second album, *NSYNC split from their manager in a bitter dispute and signed with Jive, the kings of teen pop. For *NSYNC, the move provided them with an opportunity to, in the immortal words of George W. Bush, "define themselves," to prove that they were an independent unit -- hence the title No Strings Attached. To ...
While it didn't set the charts on fire like her previous albums, the ambitious Erotica contains some of Madonna's best and most accomplished music (including the hit singles "Deeper and Deeper" and "Rain"), even if it runs a bit long. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
The Backstreet Boys finally broke (and broke big) in America during 1998, as if by design. They had been Euro sensations for a couple of years, but it wasn't until Backstreet's Back was unleashed in the U.S. in 1997 that they had a presence in the States, and it was no small presence, either -- after selling over ten million copies, the album ...
"Barbie Girl" is one of those inexplicable pop culture phenomena -- a bouncy, slightly warped Euro-dance song that simultaneously sends up femininity and Barbie dolls. Mattel wasn't too amused, but the public was, making it a huge hit in Europe and America. Like many Europop acts, Aqua isn't capable of delivering another song as insanely catchy as ...
If ever there was a group that seemed destined for one-hit wonder status it was Aqua. Their huge 1997/1998 hit "Barbie Girl" was a cleverly designed piece of trifle, fueled by delirious Euro-disco beats and the helium-voiced Lene Grawford Nystrom, along with her comically gruff counterpart, Rene Dif. The song was giddy, silly fun, but it was hard ...
When the Norwegian production duo Röyksopp dropped their first album, Melody A.M., it sounded as though they were on a stopover from another planet. Otherworldly samples and a crisp production sense combined to make the singles "Eple" and "Sparks" perfect examples of the downbeat form and near-ubiquitous inclusions on chillout compilations. As ...
Hard to believe that *NSYNC released a mere three proper albums over the course of a mere three years in their reign as one of the two most-popular boy bands in the great teen pop boom at the turn of the millennium. Given their constant presence on the charts, on MTV, on the airwaves and on magazine covers, it seems like their time in the ...
Razor and Tie's Fired Up includes 18 club/dance cuts by Melanie C., Deborah Cox, Jocelyn Enriquez, the Bucketheads, Amber, and Aqua. There is nothing particularly outstanding here, but it will work nicely as the soundtrack for a night of clubbing. There is also a two-disc version of Fired Up that doubles the number of tracks. ~ Al Campbell, All ...
This two-disc compilation takes on two sides of the Thrillseekers. Disc one is a 15-song tour de force progressive house/trance DJ mix featuring tracks from Skyform, AR52, and the Thrillseekers themselves. Disc two focuses on remix work the Thrillseekers have done for such progressive house gurus as Armin van Buuren and Ferry Corsten. ~ Rob ...
Everytime We Touch: The Album was the CD originally released in 2006 by Natalie Horler, otherwise known as Cascada, a group name for the girl with flowing blonde hair from Bonn, Germany. Cascada was not just Natalie however, but also DJ Manian (Manuel Reuter) a German DJ and Yanou (born Yann Peifer) a remixer and producer specializing in house ...
When 'N Sync usurped the Backstreet Boys' record of number of albums sold in a single week early in 2000, it had to hurt the Backstreets, since it was played in the press as if they had lost the teen pop throne. By the time the group released their third album, Black & Blue, Thanksgiving week 2000, 'N Sync was still popular, but the arc of No ...
It's been nearly five years since the Backstreet Boys have released a new album, but as the all-too-literal title of 2005's Never Gone makes clear, they don't want you to call their fourth LP a comeback -- in their mind, they've been here for years. That's not strictly true, since all five members have disappeared from the charts, if not the ...
Ultimate Dance Party 1997 contains many of the biggest dance hits of 1995 and 1996, including Quad City DJs' "Come On and Ride It (The Train)," La Bouche's "Be My Lover," Ace of Base's "Beautiful Life," Everything but the Girl's "Missing," Los Del Mar's "Macarena" (which is not the version with English lyrics), Annie Lennox's "No More I Love You ...
Ace of Base's strong point is not versatility -- all of their hit singles have exactly the same beat. But that doesn't matter. On their debut album, The Sign, they managed to create a piece of melodic Euro-disco that was a huge hit all over the world, appealing to both dance clubs and pop radio. And with singles like "All That She Wants," "The ...
Hits Unlimited collects all of the biggest hits from the dance outfit 2 Unlimited, including "Let the Beat Control Your Body," "Get Ready for This," and "Workaholic," making it a perfect introduction, as well as the only necessary album for casual fans. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Robyn's debut album, Robyn Is Here, isn't particularly deep, but it is well-executed Eurotrash dance-pop. The Swedish teenager has an appealingly thin voice, and her producers and songwriters have a knack for crafting hooky dance-pop that sounds as if it was made in 1990, not 1997. Half of the album rides by on mediocre songs and first-rate ...
The Spice Girls, as well as their managers and songwriters, are nothing if not clever, and Spiceworld, the group's second album, illustrates exactly how sharp they are. Conventional wisdom dictates that Spiceworld should be a weak facsimile of Spice, which itself featured a handful of great singles surrounded by filler. Conventional wisdom, in ...
Eiffel 65's vocoder-heavy Europop, which yielded the major international dance smash "Blue (Da Ba Dee)," falls somewhere in the dance music spectrum between Daft Punk and the Vengaboys. It employs funky, deep house grooves with vocoder enhanced vocals, similar to Daft Punk and Modjo, yet many of the songs incorporate nursery rhyme choruses and ...
Released in 1987 as a stopgap, the remix album You Can Dance reworks material from Madonna's first three albums. Actually, it keeps the spotlight on her first record, adding non-LP singles like "Into the Groove" for good measure, along with a bonus track of "Where's the Party." Since it's a dance album, it doesn't matter that "Holiday" and "Into ...
A wise man, perhaps Giorgio Moroder (or maybe PT Barnum -- they all run together after a while), once said that it was possible to fool all the people all the time (or words to that effect), and if he was around in 1990, he would have used Milli Vanilli's multi-platinum, Grammy-winning, number one debut album, Girl You Know It's True, as proof. ...
Riding the wave of post-Spice Girls dance-pop groups and sounding suspiciously like a low-rent, American Take That, the Orlando, FL-based *NSYNC came bursting out of roller rinks across the U.S. in the spring of 1998 with their eponymous debut. The group hired a number of producers, including the Backstreet Boys' Kristian Lundin as well as Denniz ...
When ABBA was together, many American rock critics gave the Swedish group scathing reviews and dismissed its pop-rock, Euro-pop, and Euro-disco as disposable fluff. But time would be much kinder to ABBA than American rock critics, and its songs proved to be anything but disposable. Although ABBA broke up in 1983, its music proved to be quite ...
Erasure had never hidden its love for ABBA, with one of its earliest B-sides being an enthusiastic remake of "Gimme Gimme Gimme," a version of which later popped up on The Two-Ring Circus. Come 1992 and Clarke and Bell decided to take the full plunge on a tribute EP with great results, including getting to the top of the charts in England. All ...
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