14 August 2014
Viral hit? Top of the charts in Ireland and across Europe? Really? Okay, on re-listening to ‘Stolen Dance’ it’s slightly familiar to me. Still, though: there’s no killer hook or memorable lyric or catchy chorus here at all. Lead Milky Chancer Clemens Rehbein picks some basic jazzy shapes on the ol’ Tanglewood and skims his way across a stream of vague English lyrics – and this tune went viral? Why, was there a clip of him playing it in the nip on top of a police car at 4 a.m. outside a McDonald’s in Germany or something?
‘Stolen Dance’ only got to no. 24 on the UK charts, and for once the Brits may have been right about something. Maybe they should go all-in on this mid-’10s Euro-scepticism of theirs and see how it pans out.
Since you’re being direct-debited for this by the word, a quick few lines about the band name. It doesn’t mean anything, says Rehbein. This puts me in mind of my Paris years covering the local indie music scene, when bands hell-bent on international appeal, e.g. a gig upstairs at the Dog and Duck in London, would write lyrics in English and give themselves an anglophone name too: to wit, real French bands actually called The Bewitched Hands On The Top Of Our Heads, Jil Is Lucky, (Please) Don’t Blame Mexico, and a group whose excellent 2009 single ‘Hey You’ would surely have been a worldwide smash if they had named themselves something more credible than Pony Pony Run Run. That said, Milky Chance went to number one across Europe, so what do I know.
