Always offering up the biggest UK chart hits of 25 years ago every Thursday at 9am, this is The Story of Pop: 1998. This week: love might bring us back together for one of the biggest dance anthems of that year…
- Artist: Stardust
- Song: Music Sounds Better With You
- Released: 10/08/1998
- Writers / Producers: Stardust / Thomas Bangalter / Alain Quême / Benjamin Diamond / Dominic King / Frank Musker
- Highest UK Chart Position: #2
- Weeks on Chart: 26
Just every so often, there are those dance records which are something special and which you know are destined for great things. That could absolutely be said of this week’s featured hit; mainly because of who was behind it, and what gate it opened for dance music in the years that followed.
Having moved to Paris to study for a history degree in the mid 90s, Alan Braxe promptly dropped off his studies when he became deeply involved in the house music scene in France. Producing and making his own music in his home studio, a tape of his demos found its way to one Thomas Bangalter, of Daft Punk fame.
After releasing his first single, Roulé, on Bangalter’s Vertigo label, he then formed a band with Thomas on keyboards, and old school friend Benjamin Diamond on vocals – collectively known as Stardust. Whilst creating new songs to perform at their residency at the Rex Club in Paris, Diamond was crate digging and came across an old Chaka Khan LP.
Sampling the distinctive guitar riff from “Fate”, a track from her 1981 album What’Cha Gonna Do For Me, they spent a week in Thomas’ studio working on the track that would eventually become the filter disco house belter, “Music Sounds Better With You”.
He then took it to the annual Miami Music Conference in the spring of 1998, where the cream of the DJ and dance music world descended every year to sign and license the big floor fillers for clubbing season. Unsurprisingly, this unique cocktail of electronic sounds, disco riffs and hypnotic vocals caught on in a big way.
Charting for three weeks on import sales alone, peaking at #55, when fully released through Virgin Records in August, the track looked as if it was going to be a massive number one smash, until it was just denied at the gasp by a still strong selling Boyzone with their single we discussed last week.
Still, “Music Sounds Better With You” was as big a hit as you could get that year, peaking at #2 and eventually finishing the year as one of the top 20 biggest selling singles of 1998. Part of its sustained success and appeal was due to the enigmatic nature of Stardust themselves.
When the track was first aired on Top of the Pops after it charted, a random dancer in a pink afro wig wearing a t-shirt of the show’s logo was shown lip-syncing to the track, as there was no video or band available for a live performance.
In fact, it was several months later, when it was almost on its way out of the chart altogether by the time a promo video for the single, directed by the legendary Michel Gondry, finally hit the music channels. Thomas of course went back to Daft Punk and kept on notching up the hits behind their shiny helmets, so Stardust never did release another single.
“Music Sounds Better With You” manages to still sound fresh a quarter of a century on, mainly because of its timeless quality but also its fresh and forward thinking approach; it was a pioneering record where dance music was concerned in 1998, and for the 90s overall it is one of the decade’s biggest dance anthems.
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The Niche Reference 