16 September 2000
If you’ve ever wondered about the spelling of this band’s name, allow me to flex my French in your direction. The language of Molière and Marcel Marceau doesn’t have a hard ‘j’ sound, hence the difference between Jack and Jacques, so to a French speaker unfamiliar with the works of Austin Powers “mojo” would sound more like “mo-zho”. The extra ‘d’ is an aid to French speakers to pronounce this band’s name à l’anglaise.
Would Modjo’s ‘Lady (Hear Me Tonight)’ have got to number one—in Ireland and several other countries—if Spiller’s ‘Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)’ hadn’t immediately preceded it? Maybe, maybe not. Modjo’s track certainly shares the same first principles as Spiller’s: disco starlight, tight guitar riffing, woozy romance. What’s more, Modjo for their disco guitar sample go straight for the fancy stuff: none other than Chic, from a hitherto obscure track of theirs called ‘Soup For One’. In 2000 the Nile Rodgers revival hadn’t yet kicked in, but it’s not as if Chic records had stopped being shimmeringly fantastic in the interim. So, a Chic sample won’t go far wrong.
It’s probably more accurate to say that Modjo are following the path of Air, whose Moon Safari album in 1998 had provided a lusher, dreamier side to the French indie-tronica of Daft Punk. Still, any disco-adjacent track will have its appeal to the nightclub-going constituency. As much as I really like ‘Lady (Hear Me Tonight)’, I must admit that it runs that well-chosen Chic sample into the ground – and just the one lyric verse repeated too. Even the mid-section is only that same verse but with the sampled music dropped out. If Modjo’s track had come out any time before 1999 I may have been more gushing, but that says more about the poor quality of our ’90s chart-toppers. Happily, the ’00s is a whole other ball game. But at least Modjo mean we’ve now had two great number ones in a row. I have a good feeling about what’s to come.
