100 Greatest Songs of the 90’s #21 Deee-Lite – Groove Is In The Heart

Released : 1990

A song that transcends itself? How very nineties. Created from New York’s East Village party scene, Deee-Lite looked like an explosion in a thrift shop but sounded like they’d been transported via laser beam from some future past. The trio – DJ Dmitri, Lady Miss Kier and Towa Tei – also had a cartoon sheen to their style and spirit, but like a day-glo Saint Etienne, mined the sixties and seventies to make the new decade sound fabulous.

Featuring guest appearances from Bootsy Collins, the Horny Horns of Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker, Q-Tip and Herbie Hancock by way of sampling Bring Down the Birds, Groove Is In The Heart felt almost too big to fail. Not that was ever a possibility, as the floor filling odyssey carpet bombed every square inch of radio, MTV and clubland like some funky house B-52.

It’s real magic however was in being all things to all people. If you needed one, it was a global dance anthem, the decade’s first; but if you wanted pop, it was all that too. In the process of being for a short time it both defined and eclipsed both, a righteous shot of happiness and unity which lives on in the museum of the mind today.