17 May 1998
“What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?” Not the trailer for a new Fred West-style homicidal home improvement show, but the most baffling pop lyric of 1998. Most of us thought it was some oblique reference to a black eye, and I recall a theory that it was a callback to how the Wicked Witch of the East met her fate in The Wizard of Oz. The latter is closer to the truth: that lyric here in ‘Feel It’ is taken directly from a 1995 record by a group called Urban Discharge, ‘Drop A House’. So there you are: real house, real chimney.
If not quite the sensation of a house landing on you, ‘Feel It’ certainly makes a great impact. The sample from ‘Can You Feel It’ is well chosen: the propulsive rhythm, the dramatic blare of brass. Maya, an American singer doing front-of-house for an Italian DJ duo, sells that chimney line with strong, strident attitude. So that’s the first minute or so. After that, the same tricks over again start to sound a bit tired, and it’s only a two-minute track. As well as the chat about that chorus lyric, I remember ‘Feel It’ in 1998 making me feel pretty weary pretty fast, and the same applies today: a brief bit of novelty you can soon sweep away.
