FEATURE:
Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure
Whigfield – Saturday Night
___________
THE 1990s is a fascinating decade…
as there is that mix of classic hits and iconic tracks combined with the one-hit wonders and songs that some would consider quite cheesy or a guilty pleasure. There is something pleasingly carefree and delightful about Whigfield’s Saturday Night and, whilst some consider it to be a guilty pleasure, I would argue that it is one of the best singles of the 1990s – and there are many reasons to love the song! For a start, it is infectious and catchy as hell! It also dethroned Wet Wet Wet’s Love Is All Around in 1994 after that song stayed at the top of the charts for fifteen weeks here in 1994! Saturday Night was released in 1992 in Italy, and in 1993 through Spain. The song was written by Italian producers Larry Pignagnoli and Davide Riva. In 1994, Saturday Night was included on Whigfield’s eponymous debut album. It is one of those songs that was everywhere when I started high school in 1994! Saturday Night sold by the bucket-load, and it was played at every disco and party that I can recall from that time. Perhaps it does not have the same weight and nuance of some classic Pop from the time, but there is a simplicity and positivity that has meant Saturday Night, without irony, has been taken to heart and celebrated. Other great songs like Another Day, Big Time, and Close to You can be heard on the Whigfield album, and Saturday Night was the epic closer.
I think it is brave to have a song that good at the very end of an album, and it seems like a natural opener - but I guess we work up to the song and go out with a smile! I think, as we are still separated and not back to normal, songs like Saturday Night are perfect to lift the mood. In fact, back in May, Whigfield (Sannie Carlson) spoke with Sky News about the endurance of Saturday Night and why it is perfect for now:
“But it seems songs from the 1990s, that decade of hope and optimism, are also providing the uplift that people need as enforced isolation nears the end of week six.
Speaking to Sky News from her home outside Milan, Italy, Sannie Carlson, the woman better known as Whigfield, says she has seen many renditions of Saturday Night in the 27 years since its release, but none quite like the dancing in Dublin.
"I've seen a lot of these videos throughout the years, but I just think this is so funny because everybody was safely distanced, you know, and they had their little marks where they were supposed to stand, which I thought was hilarious," she says. "It made me really happy."
Carlson says she thinks the song has had a lasting legacy because of its simplicity.
PHOTO CREDIT: Whigfield/Sannie Carlson
"I think it's so cheesy," she says. "It's one of those songs that you either really hate it or you really love it, and it's like nursery rhymes, it's easy to sing along to.
"It's the classic, you cannot not play it at a wedding, because it's just one of those few moments where people can get together and be silly. And I'm all about silliness and not taking myself so seriously.
"I think, especially right now, people need that… I don't know, we just have to get through this and I think music is an amazing therapy for mental health."
The song also captured perfectly that teenage anticipation of a big night out, as demonstrated by Whigfield dancing in a towel and plaiting her hair in the video.
Well, that was the video," she laughs. "I mean, it was about a girl getting ready to go out on a Saturday Night. When people ask, what's the song about? It's not deep, you know?"
The '90s, Carlson says, was her "perfect era" for music.
"I think the music was very melodic then," she says. "It was more simple and it was easier to create an artist. I mean, nowadays... Well, kids can make music from home and there's so much music out there. It's not like you get into the charts and you stay there for, like, weeks and weeks; now it's like, in and out".
I love the fact that Whigfield thinks the song is a bit cheesy but, when we assess Saturday Night, I don’t think it should be seen as a guilty pleasure. I reckon Saturday Night captured a spirit of trouble-free life and the thrill of getting ready for a night out. I don’t think there have been many Pop songs since that have managed to say what Saturday Night did! It is a fantastic track, and one that actually sounds pretty good today in terms of how it has aged. There is that part of me who would love to be transported back to 1994 when the song came out in the U.K., and I think many people discovering the song new today can definitely get a sense of why the song remains so popular. In 2016, Whigfield and songwriter Alfredo ‘Larry’ Pignagnoli spoke with The Guardian about the song’s creation:
“Sannie Carlson (Whigfield), singer
I studied fashion design in Copenhagen, then decided to go to Milan and show the Italians how it’s done. That didn’t work out. I ended up scraping by, doing modelling by day and PR for clubs at night. One of the club DJs, Davide Riva, was part of a music production duo. He persuaded me to sing for them.
For years, nobody was interested. It’s not easy being told your music is shit. By the mid-1990s, I was just about to quit when they came up with Saturday Night. It wasn’t my kind of music, but it at least sounded unlike everything else around at the time.
PHOTO CREDIT: Whigfield/Sannie Carlson
I’m the first to admit I’m no Maria Callas. I’d only ever sung in school. We must have done over 20 takes, then they just painstakingly spliced the best bits together. The song is like a nursery rhyme, with lyrics about what girls do when they’re getting ready to go out, and about getting hot when they’re out dancing. I named myself Whigfield after my old music teacher.
The song took ages to take off. I remember someone telling me: “I hated it at first, but now it’s stuck in my head.” People would hear it and start whistling it. Then suddenly labels right across Europe wanted it. In Britain, it went straight to No 1, knocking Wet Wet Wet’s Love Is All Around off the top after 15 weeks. They said they were glad because they were fed up being No 1. Yeah right.
Alfredo ‘Larry’ Pignagnoli, songwriter
It started with just the drums and the bass. Davide was the musician and I spent three days writing the lyrics. It was a very simple song that we thought would work in clubs and on radio. Calling it Saturday Night felt right since it was so happy and upbeat. The famous “Dee dee na na na” bit that Whigfield says at the beginning started as a joke. We were testing some variations on the melody at the end of the song and loved that bit so much we decided to make it the initial hook.
A Spanish company – actually two guys from a record store – released the track initially. The story goes that an aerobics instructor in Valencia came across it in a record shop and created a funny dance for it. His class of holiday-makers all did it on the beach and, after their holiday was over and they’d all gone home, they asked DJs in clubs to play it, so they could do the funny dance again. As the dance gained popularity, so did the song – and once it became a hit in Spain, everything snowballed”.
Whigfield’s last studio album, W, was released back in 2012, and I hope we hear more material from her. I like how Carlson is still happy to talk about Saturday Night and life as Whigfield. I would have hated for her to have sort of faded away, but it is wonderful that she is still out there putting music into the world! One other thing I love about Saturday Night is the video. In an interview from last year, Whigfield was asked about the song’s video:
“Do you ever get sick of people *just* wanting you to sing ‘Saturday Night’, for instance?
I used to, maybe in the mid 90s, because it was non-stop 24/7, and there was a moment when I was a bit overwhelmed, and it was a bit too much, and I travelled over the world, and it was the same and the same and the same. Now I just have fun with it – now I can be naughty!
That’s a very naughty video and song isn’t it!
There’s actually been quite a lot of edits to that…
Oh really!!
Yeah! It was worse than that. There was more tongue and whatever involved, and I was like, no guys, this is not what I want. I wanted *something* but I don’t like in your face kind of stuff. Stuff that’s like fun and easy, yes, but in your face, I don’t like that”.
Saturday Night is still being talked about in 2020 so, close to three decades after its initial release, it is obvious that it is much more than a throwaway or a one-hit wonder that we should keep in the 1990s. When The Guardian chose their top-hundred U.K. number-ones earlier in the year, Whigfield’s Saturday Night made the number-ninety-one slot:
“Saturday Night just pipped Gina G’s Ooh Aah … Just a Little Bit to our 90s Eurobanger slot. First off, it’s an actual Eurobanger (not an Aussie impersonator), and like the Village People’s YMCA, it has a dance routine invented by fans that came to define the song. It’s got an immediately iconic tag (“dee dee da da da!”), plus it was the victor in one of pop’s funniest plagiarism cases: I want some of whatever the person who thinks this sounds like Lindisfarne’s Fog on the Tyne was having”.
I shall leave things there, but I definitely feel that Whigfield’s Saturday Night is a song that is way above a guilty pleasure, and I know it can lift the mood whoever you are. For those of us who remember the song coming out, it is nice to see how it has survived and the fact people are still talking about it! There is something about the song that hits people – whether it is the energy and catchy chorus or the music video. I really like the track and, in these odd times, I have been revisiting it quite a lot. One thing is certain: it only takes one spin of Saturday Night before the song is stuck in your head…
PHOTO CREDIT: Whigfield/Sannie Carlson
FOR the rest of the week!