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.