7. Doop - "Doop"

Or, "Does anyone know the word for this phenomenon?"

My plan was to start this article by finding the word for something I’ve often experienced but don’t know how to articulate. I’m sure it’s a feeling everyone has had. It’s when you remember something but nobody else seems to have a recollection of it. Intense research (read: two to three minutes on Google) didn’t solve my conundrum. It’s not a false memory, not the Mandela effect, and it’s not a glitch in the matrix. The best I can come up with is hyperthymesia, but that’s more of psychological condition and doesn’t seem to relate to pop hits of the 1990s, as far as I can tell.

But in the absence of a better descriptor, let’s just say I have a real case of hyperthymesia when it comes to the song “Doop” by Doop.

Obviously I’m being glib here because this track has hundreds of thousands of plays on Spotify but be honest, when was the last time you thought of this song, if you even know it at all?

If you were around in the UK (or Europe or Australia, for that matter) in 1994, you’ll have encountered this song. It was the tenth biggest selling track of the year in the United Kingdom and was Number 1 for three weeks. In fact, it sold over 400,000 copies. All of which raises the question: what the hell was going on here?

People like to clutch their pearls and worry about children being confronted with ideas they assume will be too complex for their fragile minds. “How do I explain same-sex marriage to my child?” frets your local neighbourhood homophobe, while I’m yet to encounter a child who can’t wrap their head around the concept that people who love one another should be allowed to marry if they so wish. What I’m trying to say here is that when “Doop” was in the charts, I was only seven years old, it had only been three months since “Mr Blobby”, and nothing about this seemed like it was out of the ordinary.

However, in retrospect, “Doop” is an utterly bizarre song. Some sort of fusion of swing, Charleston, ragtime and house music that, for almost a whole month, an entire country apparently collectively agreed was the best piece of music commercially available. Clearly, electro-swing was (and still is) “a thing” and Jive Bunny had been very popular in the late 1980s, but—oh, wait, you might not know Jive Bunny.

Anyway, I feel like people still talk about Jive Bunny. Not regularly, obviously, but talk to someone who was conscious of chart music three or four decades ago, and they’d probably have some vague recollection of who—or what—Jive Bunny was. “Doop”, by contrast, seems to have completely faded from public recognition. I don’t suggest you test this out on people lest you want to be marked out as particularly odd, but I bet the next time you meet a bunch of people at a party, none of them will remember “Doop.”

(Side note: I don’t generally do this, but seeing as the curio where you remember a song no one else does apparently evokes very strong feelings in me, I’d love people to comment below this article with their own examples. It could be very cathartic. And if someone else replies “I remember that too!” that’s a high you’ll be chasing all month)

My only theory is that something was in the water back in 1994. Grunge and Madchester had imploded, and boy bands and Britpop hadn’t really got going. Sure, “Parklife” and “Definitely Maybe” were both Number 1 albums, but neither Blur nor Oasis had had a chart-topping single at this point. As a result, some of the Number 1 singles this year, yes, have been largely forgotten thirty years on, but were also just plain weird.

Anyone remember Status Quo teaming up with a professional football team?

How about when a bathroom salesman from Slough came out of nowhere and had this hit?

Or perhaps the band who were put together purely to record the soundtrack to a Levi’s commercial?

These three songs all got to Number 1 in the same month.

A lot of this blog so far has been about novelty songs and given my age at the time, it kind of makes sense. But 1994 seemed like a particular hotbed for oddities beating the industry and having commercial success. But I was growing up, starting to take music a little more seriously and perhaps I wanted something a little more substantive. Luckily for me, 1995 delivered…

…although not before this reached Number 1 in January.

Seriously?!?!

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What didn’t get to Number 1 because of this song?

• Ace of Base - “The Sign”

Ace of Base hold an interesting place in pop music history. This song was co-produced by Denniz PoP at his famous Cheiron Studios in Stockholm. PoP’s protege was Max Martin who has written and/or produced tracks that have sold over 135 million copies. He basically invented 21st Century pop.

Another thing from that period people don’t seem to remember now is the scandal that arose when it was revealed one of Ace of Base used to be in a neo-Nazi skinhead gang. That presumably didn’t come up when this song was a prominent part of the film Pitch Perfect.

• Bruce Springsteen - “Streets of Philadelphia”

This is the first Bruce song I ever heard and it prejudiced me against his music for years.

I’ve still never listened to a Bruce Springsteen album from front to back, and this is probably why. I don’t care how good “Dancer in the Dark” is.