24 January 1991
Poor me. Not only was I deprived of the UK terrestrial channels, but I was now also missing out on UK satellite TV, home to 1991’s first big pop-cultural hit: The Simpsons. I had seen the prototype Simpsons shorts as part of The Tracey Ullmann Show, which was shown on RTÉ, but that didn’t count. Anyway, until such time as Irish TV eventually started screening it, this single and its video were my introduction to The Simpsons, which explains my initial bemusement at how, when I finally saw a few episodes, it turned out Bart wasn’t really the central character after all.
Of more bemusement to me today is how ‘Do The Bartman’ was number one in Ireland for a whole nine weeks. No one was seriously buying this for any merits as a piece of music. If an item of Simpsons merchandise could top our singles chart for over two months, clearly the charts were losing all credibility and utility as a barometer of pop music. And there’s another Simpsons number one single to come.
In its slight defence, ‘Do The Bartman’ is better than it needed to be. It has a new jack swing beat and a catchy chorus. An uncredited Michael Jackson contributes backing vocals, though the claim that he also secretly co-wrote the track has been mostly denied by those involved. (As for the lead vocals, Bart Simpson is voiced by Nancy Cartwright, the aunt of Sabrina Carpenter.) Still, the verses are clunky and often cringy. There’s about a minute’s worth of substance here, stretched out to fill a tedious four minutes. But here I am like an eejit, still trying to treat this as a meaningful pop single. You might as well have had an Irish Writers tea-towel from Carroll’s Irish Gifts at number one.
