1995 Rednex: Cotton Eye Joe

"There's no great art to layering a 4/4 dance beat over an existing piece of music to 'dance it up'; after all, anyone can do it" - there's no great honour in quoting yourself to back up your own arguments either, but sometimes the turn of events can paint you into a corner where options are limited; if 'Cotton Eye Joe' isn't an example of slapping a dance beat over an unlikely source to give it a nineties sheen then I'm a Dutchman. But then again, as it has an American bluegrass folk song as its source that in turn inspired many a partner and line dance then I suppose it's not that unlikely and didn't need too much of a Eurodance boot from these Swedes to get it going in this modern setting. Unfortunately, its line dance ancestry boots it down a highway to hell where the devil, wearing chaps and a ten gallon hat, sings 'Achy Breaky Heart' at every crossroads.

Do I like it? No I don't - there's something very dad's and grandma's about 'Cotton Eye Joe' and the trans-Atlantic Wurzels, hillbilly image of the band, something very wedding reception or office party that's all forced jollity and fake humour to let the old and the game hit the floor to show they've still "got it". If that sounds mean spirited, it's because it's meant to; 'Cotton Eye Joe' puts me in that mood. Because while I've also said "I'm always partial to a bit of quirk in anything, and there should always be room in the charts for something that almost defies categorisation", 'Cotton Eye Joe' is by no means either an update/re-interpretation of Americana or a radical development in the dance genre - what it is, is a novelty collision of two distinct worlds and ages that's a logical extension of the work 'Jive Bunny' started. And far from being 'quirky', it's indicative of a wider, lazy malaise that saw novelty fast becoming the norm - following a year that already gave us 'Baby Come Back', 'Saturday Night', 'Doop' and 'Twist And Shout' it's a makeover too many, and it's also neatly illustrative of both just how easy it was getting to 'create' a number one record and how easily pleased the record buying public were growing to be.