I’ve certainly never met anyone who feels indifferent to this single.Ģ from me, I’m afraid. Perhaps it’s an all-or-nothing deal – in minimalist songs you either adore the central hooks, or you don’t like them in the first minute and find them increasingly wearing thereafter, because there are no additional flourishes or details to distract you. For me, the annoyance started with the bloody irritating noise in the background (which I always thought might have been influenced by Rotterdam Termination Source’s “Poing”) then it became the way Whigfield sang “Baby” (“Bay-baaaay”) then the “dee naa naa” bits, then the bassline… but I knew (and still know) people who swear this single is a perfect piece of pop, my wife for one. The problem with very minimal, repetitive songs is that if you don’t like them, you somehow begin to find a bottomless well of details you find aggravating despite their slender construction. Then that goodwill gave way to irritation, and eventually to extreme dislike. I think I initially regarded this song favourably purely and simply because it knocked The Wets off the top of the charts (I’m sure I can remember Tony Mortimer of East 17 hosting “Top of the Pops” for the final week of their reign and predicting that Whigfield would finish them off, and I actually got slightly excited). I might give it 5 if I were being generous. But still, in general I’d gladly not hear it again, and there are countless other tracks I’d rate over it for “retro sentimental dancing purposes”. I am prepared to grant that “Saturday Night” has a certain innocent, good-natured cheery charm about it. The record it reminded me at the time of – maybe in quality (palpable musical thinness, and in being mildly irritating, the mildness of which was probably actually more annoying than if it had been a full-on gimmicky track) was Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)”. Although in fact a reacquaintance with the track did make it appear less objectionable than I had categorised it as being in my memory. I’m afraid I will have a big stone labelled “Whigophobe” tied around my neck, and I will then be cast into the sea and left to drown, if I say very much more about this song, however. I remember dancing to this at the “megabop” in St Andrews as an undergraduate. « WET WET WET – “Love Is All Around” TAKE THAT – “Sure” » Comments If you do stick around, your reward is a lovely bit of house piano heading for the fade. Not so “Saturday Night”, which is charmingly unassuming, thanks mainly to Whigfield’s matter-of-fact performance. Most of them – from Conga to Macarena – carry a strong tang of coercion amidst the Piz Buin and Pina Colada, a vampiric need to co-opt their audience into the Fun. It is that rare holiday smash which doesn’t hustle its listener. If anything, I like this most for its influence – the enduring post-Whigfield school of plinky-plonk smilecore Eurodance which produced feelgood gems (Ang Lee’s “2 Times”, ATC’s “Around The World”) through the rest of the decade.īut actually “Saturday Night”‘s resistibility is its second fine quality.
Not, though, irresistible – I’ve generally been pleased to hear “Saturday Night” and am content that it has made the world a happier place in some small fashion, but I wouldn’t own it, or put it on for fun, or even learn the dance. Obviously that’s entirely subjective and I expect to be swamped with annoyed Whigophobes in the comments, but for me this record has lucked onto something sweet and primal. How can you tell when something is iconically simple and not just, er, simple? I’d say when it never actually ends up irritating you. The main thing is that it’s one of those iconically simple pop hits, like a “Louie Louie” for the Thomas Cook set. “Saturday Night” has two big things going for it.
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