‘Music For The Dancers’ N°521 – Vintage 90s Music Videos

1 . Rachid Taha – Voilà Voilà

Rachid Taha’s “Voilà Voilà” plays out like a storm wrapped in sound—a snarling manifesto against the encroaching shadows of far-right politics in 1990s France.

The track is laced with a manic pulse, where techno beats collide with North African rhythms in a chaotic yet oddly coherent frenzy.

It’s equal parts protest and provocation, with Taha’s growling vocals delivering a scathing indictment of societal decay without succumbing to melodrama.

The production, helmed by Steve Hillage, pairs sharp-edged electronics with a raw, punk ethos, crafting a sonic landscape that feels both urgent and rebellious.

Taha’s frenetic energy is balanced by a meticulous layering of sounds—rock riffs weave through polyrhythmic percussion, creating a musical tension as riveting as the subject matter itself.

The song doesn’t just protest xenophobia; it embodies resistance, harnessing urgency and anger to spark movement as much as thought.

A throwback to his Carte de Sejour days, it updates its political edge with a more experimental, tech-infused veneer.

Stripped of pleasantries, “Voilà Voilà” surgically lays bare societal fractures, a vivid audio snapshot of a France grappling with its identity in a rapidly shifting world.

But where some protest music falters under the weight of its message, Taha infuses even his frustrations with sardonic wit and a danceable groove, creating something as prickly as it is infectious.

By the time it fades out, the track feels less like a song and more like a defibrillator shock jolting a complacent populace awake.

“Voilà Voilà” isn’t just a statement; it’s a fist pounding against the walls of apathy, an anthem for the disillusioned that refuses to whisper the truth when it can shout it.

Featured on the 1993 album “Rachid Taha”.

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2 . Adam Austin – Centrefold

Adam Austin’s 1998 cover of “Centrefold” takes a lighter, more playful spin on the original hit by The J. Geils Band, a song that dominated airwaves in 1981 with its cheeky contemplation of infatuation blurred by fantasy.

The original leaned into a punchy pop-rock swagger with an insistent organ riff; Austin’s version, while competent, lacks the bite that made the track iconic, opting instead for a smoother delivery that fails to leave the same indelible impression.

What sets this cover apart is the inclusion of Samantha Fox in the music video, a nod to British glamor that feels oddly disconnected from the American roots of the original.

Though Austin’s iteration finds a presence on YouTube, it remains obscure in the pantheon of covers, sharing none of the chart-topping accolades of its predecessor.

Ultimately, while it’s a passable effort, it raises the question—why cover a song so stitched to its era without a fresh perspective?

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3 . D-Mob – Why? (w/ Cathy Dennis)

“D_Mob – Why?” is a track that thrives in its blend of emotional weight and club appeal.

A collaboration between British producer D Mob and singer-songwriter Cathy Dennis, the 1994 release fits neatly into the house genre while exploring themes of loss and remembrance.

Dedicated to the late Philip Hall, the song channels its melancholy undertone through Dennis’s unmistakable vocal delivery, which balances fragility with undeniable strength.

The production leans on layered synths and a pulsating beat, creating a juxtaposition between the introspective lyrics and its danceable rhythm.

Its commercial performance reinforces its appeal, charting at number one on the UK Club Chart and earning respectable positions across broader UK and European charts.

The track also boasts a range of remixes, offering everything from radio-friendly edits to expansive club mixes, each adding a distinct flavor while staying true to the original’s essence.

Despite being tied to its era, “Why?” feels timeless in its emotional clarity and sonic ambition.

Featured on the 1992 album “Into the Skyline”.

Lyrics >> Review >> More by the same : Official Site

4 . Tin Tin Out – All I Wanna Do

“All I Wanna Do” by Tin Tin Out offers a slick meld of dance-pop sophistication and late ’90s electronic minimalism, embodying an era where UK producers sought to carve out chart-friendly, melodic club tracks.

The song’s arrangement leans on cascading piano riffs and polished beats, paired with a vocal delivery that teeters between radio-ready earnestness and the polished detachment emblematic of its time.

The production is undeniably tight, yet it lacks the distinct punch that pushes a track beyond pleasant to memorable, leaving it firmly anchored in the competent-but-not-groundbreaking category of dance-pop.

Absent the marquee collaborations or narrative heft some of Tin Tin Out’s contemporaries relied on, the track instead serves as a snapshot of the duo’s efforts to capture mainstream club sensibilities while riding the broader wave of UK electronic music’s ascendancy in the ’90s.

Compared to their later, more intricate works like “Strings for Yasmin,” this track feels like an early experiment, setting the stage for the duo’s more realized forays into blending emotion with electronica.

There’s a sheen to “All I Wanna Do” that hints at potential, but it stops short of delivering a defining or commanding moment, both for the duo and for its surrounding genre in that period.

Featured on the 1998 album “Always”.

More by the same : Wikipedia

5 . Encore – Le Disc Jockey

“Encore – Le Disc Jockey” shamelessly shadowboxes with Sash!’s 1996 eurodance classic, “Encore Une Fois,” mirroring its every move without apology or invention.

This 1999 release feels less like a tribute and more like a karaoke session where someone forgot their unique touch at home, meticulously copying the beats, tempo, and spirit of the original.

If Sash!’s track conjured strobe lights, sweat-slicked dancefloors, and a certain frenetic ecstasy, “Le Disc Jockey” fumbles towards the same imagery but lands more like a photocopy left out in the sun too long.

There are no collaborations worth raising an eyebrow over, nor does it punctuate its presence with bold chart moves or striking live renditions.

The breakdowns and crescendos invoke déjà vu rather than awe, and any accompanying clip recycles more than it reimagines, as though it was spliced from leftover reels of its predecessor.

It serves as an audible time capsule of late-’90s French club culture, but one that’s double-dipped in derivative excess.

Perhaps the worst insult is that no one can really hate it—it’s made for familiarity, not impact—sliding into the background without a scratch of originality to hold it there.

Lyrics >> More by the same : Wikipedia

6 . Partizan – Drive Me Crazy

“Drive Me Crazy” by Partizan exists as a curious artifact of the late 1990s pop landscape, an era juggling colorful boy bands and grunge’s last gasps.

Rather than redefining the wheel, the track coasts on its bouncy, radio-friendly synths and a vocal delivery that’s polished but lacks a distinct personality.

Released on February 8, 1997, it reached a respectable, if modest, peak of number 36 on the charts, marking it as passable background noise rather than a cultural cornerstone.

The accompanying riff, while energetic, feels more like a checklist of sounds circulating in the mid-to-late ’90s than an innovation in itself.

Lyrically, it hovers around familiar themes of passion and obsession but doesn’t shake off a sense of predictability.

Partizan, a group with only two charting hits under its belt, fails to cultivate the kind of mystique or eccentricity that might have elevated their output above the fray.

Their follow-up single, “Keep Your Love” (with Natalie Robb), fared even less impressively at a peak of number 53, lending credence to the notion that Partizan was more fleeting moment than lasting influence.

“Drive Me Crazy” captures a slice of vaguely pleasant—but hardly essential—late-’90s pop, a track that flashes briefly before slipping just as quietly into collective amnesia.

More by the same : Wikipedia

7 . Johnny Clegg & Savuka – Cruel Crazy Beautiful World

“Cruel Crazy Beautiful World” by Johnny Clegg & Savuka captures the paradoxes of life through its intricate blend of worldbeat rhythms and poignant lyricism.

Written for his newborn son Jesse, the song oscillates between hope and trepidation, offering life advice through memorable metaphors like washing “with the crocodile in the river” and tolerating the “crooked politician.”

Released in 1989, it served as the title track for their album, balancing social commentary within its melodic framework, reflective of Clegg’s South African roots during the intense apartheid era.

The track reached moderate chart success—peaking at number 86 in the UK, number 25 in Sweden, and climbing to number 5 in Switzerland—while showcasing an international resonance that extended beyond radio airplay.

With Alex Acuna’s percussion and Keith Hutchinson’s saxophone weaving into the arrangement, the composition remains rich, layered, and evocative, yet never overstated in its production.

Thematically, it juxtaposes harsh realities with a persevering optimism, making it both deeply personal and universally relatable.

The video for the song, carried by MTV during its rotation, and its inclusion in films like *Opportunity Knocks*, reveals its broader cultural penetration as a ballad for resilience during turbulent times.

Johnny Clegg’s performance at the 46664 Arctic concert, commemorating Nelson Mandela, adds another layer to its legacy, embodying a commitment to humanitarian values that extended beyond music.

The track’s simplicity in relaying complex ideas ensures its place as a nuanced commentary on life’s beautiful mess, transcending its era to remain relevant decades later.

Featured on the 1989 album “Cruel, Crazy Beautiful World”.

Lyrics >> Review >> More by the same : Official Site

8 . Garland Jeffreys – Hail Hail Rock ‘N’ Roll

Garland Jeffreys’s “Hail Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll” packs a punch, not only as a celebration of rock music’s pioneers but as an incisive reflection on identity and race in the genre’s evolution.

With Vernon Reid on guitar and the rhythmic precision of Bernard Purdie and Sly Dunbar on drums, the track bridges raw rock energy with calculated musicianship, giving it a distinct groove that feels both timeless and deeply connected to its 1992 release.

Jeffreys’s lyrics act as both homage and critique, name-checking legends like Little Richard and Chuck Berry while questioning the racial divides embedded in rock’s history.

The accompanying music video, helmed by Anton Corbijn, delivers stark, stylish visuals that underscore the song’s dual focus on nostalgia and cultural reckoning, receiving heavy airtime on MTV Europe that year.

“Hail Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll” proves relentless in its ambition—celebratory yet confrontational, laying bare the contradictions of a genre Jeffreys both reveres and dissects with personal clarity.

Featured on the 1992 album “Don’t Call Me Buckwheat”.

Lyrics >> More by the same : Official Site

9 . Altern 8 – Frequency

Driving through the early ’90s rave scene with industrial-strength energy, Altern-8’s “Frequency” captures the chaotic pulse of an era defined by warehouse hedonism and chemical haze.

Anchored by its frenetic breakbeats and stabbing synths, the track is a relentless assault on the eardrums—an unapologetic juggernaut of hardcore and acid house influences.

Mark Archer and Chris Peat build their sound like magpies pilfering Detroit techno’s precision, the rawness of old-school electro, and stray shards of hip-hop to create something distinctly British in its aggression.

That aggression extended to their theatrical persona: donning military-grade chemical suits and gas masks, they blurred the line between rave stars and performance artists, a calculated aesthetic as loud as their beats.

“Frequency” tore through UK charts during an era when rave culture went head-to-head with mainstream pop, rubbing shoulders (or clashing elbows) with tracks by chart giants such as Michael Jackson.

More than its chart success, the track exemplifies Altern-8’s ability to be ubiquitous yet irreverent, a distillation of rave euphoria packaged into freneticism so potent it feels designed to keep you awake until sunrise, whether by choice or sheer necessity.

Featured on the 1992 album “Full On… Mask Hysteria”.

Lyrics >> More by the same : Official Site

10 . Eskimos & Egypt – Fall From Grace

“Fall From Grace” by Eskimos & Egypt is a gritty industrial dance track that feels like a relic of a bygone era while managing to sound oddly prescient.

Released in 1993, it sits at the intersection of analog synth lines and pounding rhythmic aggression, a testament to how ’90s electronica flirted with live instrumentality without blushing.

Manchester’s Eskimos & Egypt carved their niche blending machine precision with human imperfection, and this track exemplifies that dichotomy.

From the dense keyboard textures to the dark, hammering beats, it’s easy to see why the track earned its place in UK dance clubs, even if it struggled to crack broader mainstream charts.

The band’s lineup reads like an ensemble cast of multi-instrumentalists, each member juggling keyboards like it was a communal obsession.

It’s got just enough dystopian energy to catch the attention of fans of Kraftwerk-esque foreboding, but with a hint of The Human League’s pop accessibility.

Peaking at 51 on the UK charts, it didn’t exactly cement a legacy but stood out as a culturally specific moment—a time capsule from when analog and digital were still duking it out in underground music spaces.

Live performances, like their appearance on *The Word*, showed the frenetic energy the track commands, but the song itself feels less like a live experience and more like a dark synth-driven daydream.

The single’s themes are bleak, its execution uncompromising, and yet it avoids feeling alienating, enough to connect with a dancefloor full of sweaty night-dwellers.

For all its intensity, it’s more of a cult classic than a timeless anthem, but sometimes, that’s exactly the point.

Featured on the 1993 album “Perfect Disease “.

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11 . The Shamen – Heal [The Seperation]

The Shamen deliver a track caught in the tension between thoughtful introspection and pulsating electronic hedonism with “Heal (The Separation).”

Released in 1995 as part of their album “Axis Mutatis,” the song captures a moment when ’90s rave euphoria was beginning to clash with a more fractured cultural landscape.

Where their earlier efforts often leaned heavily into the anthemic, this piece pares things down, creating a space that is less about hands-in-the-air release and more about quiet, almost meditative unity.

The instrumentation is a heady blend of trippy, oscillating synths and subdued, trance-like loops, constructing a sort of sonic labyrinth that seems less about escapism and more about healing through introspection.

Unlike the chart-topping hits of their “Boss Drum” era, this track isn’t here to demand attention; instead, it works like a whispered invitation to stand still and connect amidst the chaos.

Yet the message feels ironic coming from a band often associated with larger-than-life rave culture, known for its intentional disconnection from the everyday.

This contradiction somehow feels apt—a reflection of a group still navigating its role in electronic music’s ever-fragmenting identity.

It’s not their most memorable offering, but it adds a thoughtful edge to a catalog heavy with dancefloor-ready bombast.

Featured on the 1995 album “Axis Mutatis”.

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12 . Piano Fantasia – Song For Denise

Released in 1985, “Piano Fantasia – Song for Denise” captures the essence of the Italo-disco era with a synth-heavy instrumental that teeters between melancholia and euphoria.

The track’s cascading piano melody feels like an earworm from a frozen time capsule, an unapologetically nostalgic nod to kitsch, yet its earnestness gives it staying power.

Produced by Mike Serbee and programmed by Tidi, it flaunts a futurist aesthetic that now feels retro in charming ways, with layers of lush synths that swirl like neon lights against a velvet backdrop.

Multiple versions, including extended cuts and dub remixes, reveal a track that doesn’t sit still, continuously mutating to fit different dance floors or moods, all while preserving its signature melodic hook.

Its unexpected resurgence in meme culture, thanks to “Wide Putin Walking” videos, adds an ironic modern edge to its legacy, allowing it to transcend its club roots and venture into internet-fueled absurdity.

While it never climbed the charts or snagged awards, its infectious composition keeps it firmly planted as an enduring favorite of vintage electronic music aficionados, balancing the delicate line between heartfelt and camp.

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