Saturday Flashback: Shanadoo – My Samurai

There’s no innuendo here at all.

Tom: So, we have a group of attractive female singers in revealing outfits; a Eurobeat-style backing; simple key changes and occasional English lyrics. Textbook J-pop, right?

Tim: That starts off in a similar fashion to Almighty’s version of Never Ending Story and keeps going very well. I like it, verses aside. Well done Tom.

Tom: Well, you see, I showed you that song so I could show you this. Advance warning: this is definitely not suitable for kids, or for anyone who’s likely to have nightmares about being attacked by monsters made of erogenous zones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8kYIZR7ke8

Tim: Umm… Well, it still has a good start to it, I suppose. And the bits that detracted from the last track have gone. Um. That’s probably not what you were wanting me to comment on, is it? To be honest, though, I really can’t think of words to describe what I think of the video.

Tom: So what the hell happened? Well, first things first: E-Rotic aren’t really a group, they’re a “project”. That’s fairly common for Eurodance acts – the vocalists are disposable; what really counts is the producer.

In this case, the producer is a man called David Brandes, who’d came up with the idea of a group whose songs were all based around sex. (I’d say ‘innuendo’, but there’s no innuendo here at all.)

Tim: No. No there isn’t. And I’m guessing you’ve got a whole load more lined up to show me, haven’t you?

Tom: E-Rotic’s other tracks include the prequel to this one, “Max Don’t Have Sex With Your Ex”, as well as “Help Me Dr. Dick”, “In The Heat Of The Night”, and “Test My Best”. The latter includes some… interesting noises from the vocalist.

Tim: There me be something wrong with me, but I actually really like these. Musically, at least, although not so much lyrically.

Tom: Musically, they’re very good. E-Rotic – with a variety of singers – lasted from 1995 until 2003, releasing a half-dozen studio albums and a compilation called “Greatest Tits”. With them finished, David Brandes gets their existing songs rewritten in Japanese, with no sex in them at all, puts together a girl group and presto – a romantic song about fighting for love follows, which promptly gets into the German top 20.

Shanadoo are still going, as well. As for E-Rotic? …well, not so much.

Tim: I can cope with that. Yeah, I can cope.

The Ark – Breaking Up With God

They’re pretty much asking for a lightning bolt to strike them down.

Tim: Here, we have a former Eurovision act splitting up and pretty much asking for a lightning bolt to strike them down.

Tom: I do like The Ark (mainly for that one performance) and I’m a bit disappointed they’re splitting. All good things, though. What’s the track like?

Tim: This, Mr Collins, is what a goodbye song should be like – fun, exciting, a great aa-ooooh hook before we’ve even got started and with all sorts of strange lyrics.

Tom: That ‘aa-ooooh’ got me going straight away. No idea why, but it fits very well with this track. And that ramping return from the bridge is brilliant.

Tim: And those lyrics are remarkably odd – or at least the ones that are vaguely intelligible. We have Sword of Damocles references, which then turns into the shape of a cross, we have dancing the night away as a means to reach another life, we have a black and white world haunted by God, and then at the end he finds his own heaven in life.

Tom: It is a bit odd, isn’t it? This track – and other songs like Religious by Gravitonas – would never get major label airplay in the US; ClearChannel and the other media conglomerates would be too afraid of offending the Bible Belt.

Tim: Well, it’s not just the Bible Belt they’ll be offending – don’t forget the main man Himself. To be honest I do wonder about the wisdom of releasing this right before they split up to move in different directions, because surely sticking two fingers up at the Lord is not the best way to begin a new career.