2 September 2000
The singer with an unremarkable late-’90s Britpop band; the guitarist with an un-glamorous ’70s glam rock group; a sampled loop from an obscure ’70s US disco-soul single; an unknown Italo-house DJ: these are the random and unpromising elements that combine to make ‘Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)’. So, why does it feel so good?
The DJ, whose name really is Cristiano Spiller, certainly has a good ear for a sample. The bubbling percussion and sparkling proto-Chic guitar riff are from ‘Love Is You’, a 1976 single by a US singer called Carol Williams. Neither song nor singer made any impression on the mainstream charts at the time, so all credit to signor Spiller for what I presume was some astute and fortuitous crate-digging. Where the original record is the ambient sonic wallpaper of a discotheque, Spiller’s tight loop of the percussion and riff gives his track a restless, excited urgency – a Saturday night fever, if you will. He also smartly drops in a harp glissando and string flourish for the mid section, just to add to the heavenly disco vibe.
As for the singer, I had been aware of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Britpop band Theaudience by name only, which wasn’t difficult since you couldn’t help scalding your eyes on such a terrible name. (I’ve listened and, while Theaudience were harmless indie chuggers, you’re not missing any hidden gems.) We know her now for her awkward cut-glass RP vocals on subsequent ’00s disco hits like ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’, where she delivers the critical hook line “Gonna burn this goddamn house right down” like a Tory minister forcing a pop-cultural zinger into their party conference speech. You get a similar moment in the chorus of ‘Groovejet’ when Ellis-Bextor has to verbalise the demotic “ain’t”, possibly for the first time in her life. Here, though, this dissonance actually works in the record’s favour; what is love but being thrillingly out of one’s comfort zone? Her aloof, moneyed tones also help underpin the sense of jet-set glamour and velvet-rope privilege we associate with this wave of ’00s disco-electronica; we can well believe this romantic drama is taking place in GrooveJet, an actual Miami nightclub which probably wouldn’t be letting you in. (I scrub up well so I’d be fine.)
And the glam rock guitarist? That’s Rob Davis of Mud, who you only hear now when ‘Lonely This Christmas’ gets its seasonal airplay. Mud’s other big hit, ‘Tiger Feet’, is at the agreeable end of the later, crappier wave of glam by the likes of Suzi Quatro and The Sweet. As with a lot of those later, crappier glam singles, both Mud hits were written by the Chinn-Chapman writer-producer duo, not by the band themselves. So, Davis didn’t have much hit-writing pedigree. And yet here he turns up to provide the crucial final songwriting touch to ‘Groovejet’: he’s the person who changes Ellis-Bextor’s original chorus lyric, the rather weary “And so it goes / How does it feel so good?” to the much more dramatic and high-stakes “If this ain’t love / Why does it feel so good?” Boom!
Our ’00s golden age of pop is now bearing fruit; not just the OG big dogs like Cheiron but even heretofore unheralded bit-players like Spiller, Ellis-Bextor and Davis are stepping up to the plate and making imaginative, playful, catchy records like this. Davis will pop up again in a chart year from now to co-write another real-deal ’00s classic. Ellis-Bextor parlays ‘Groovejet’ into a successful disco-diva solo career. We don’t hear much from Spiller after this, though. No matter. ‘Groovejet’ is glorious: a dizzying, thrilling mix of nightclub excitement, romantic trepidation and the honest-to-goodness rush of a pop record that blasts off like a Saturn V to the stars.
