11 February 1994
Visitors to Paris usually just take in the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame and the Louis Vuitton store. Difang and Igay Duana, though, saw Paris and ended up on a worldwide number one single without their knowledge. They were a Taiwanese folk singing duo who came to the French capital in 1988, sang traditional Amis songs for a French government project to record global ethnic music for educational use, and went home again. Imagine their chagrin, as they say in Paris, when in 1994 Taiwanese journalists started remarking on their part on an international smash hit, which was news to them. See you in court, y’all!
Yes, that’s the Duanas’ voices from that 1988 Paris recording as the distinctive wailing and ululating vocal hook on Enigma’s ‘Return To Innocence’. Michael Cretu of Enigma, in his defence, said that he thought the French project was in the public domain. In 1999 the parties settled a lawsuit out of court for credit on the track and an undisclosed amount that the Duanas used for setting up a scholarship for Amis children in Taiwan. I love this stuff.
Legal niceties duly sorted, I’m free in good conscience to listen to ‘Return To Innocence’ and find it actually enjoyable. While normally this kind of trance-y new age confection is horribly naff and gaseous, here the big barrelling drum beat, the icy lead vocals (by Angel X, the nom de pop of German singer Andreas Harde, who is indeed credited) and, yes, the Duanas’ piercing voices lend ‘Return To Innocence’ some flesh, blood and vertebrae. I even like the squally guitar solo. It all gives the track a convincing ‘Ordinary World’-style widescreen sweep: hardly subtle but certainly effective. Dare I call this a guilty pleasure?
