The Most Iconic Electronic Music Sample of Every Year (1990–2024)

Hear a sec­ond or two of Ver­non Burch’s “Get Up,” and you’re back in 1990; of “Bal­ance and Rehearsal” from the JBL sound-test album Ses­sion, and you’re back in 1999; of Eddie Johns’ “More Spell on You,” and you’re back in 2001. What, you don’t know any of those songs? Per­haps you’re more famil­iar with them in a dif­fer­ent form: chopped up, pitched up or down, and looped over and over again in the songs  “Groove Is in the Heart” by Deee-Lite, “Praise You” by Fat­boy Slim, and “One More Time” by Daft Punk. None of those hits would be con­ceiv­able with­out the clips they incor­po­rate from old­er record­ings, those named here and a vari­ety of oth­ers besides.

Three and a half decades ago, few ordi­nary lis­ten­ers would have under­stood how a song could be con­struct­ed out of oth­er songs; today, most of us know it as the tech­nol­o­gy and art of sam­pling. We tend to asso­ciate it with hip-hop, and indeed, last year we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture Track­lib’s video on the most icon­ic hip-hop sam­ples of the past half-cen­tu­ry.

But the same chan­nel has also put out the video above, which sim­i­lar­ly breaks down the con­stituent son­ic ingre­di­ents of elec­tron­ic dance hits from “Groove Is in the Heart” onward. If you’ve ever want­ed to know what, exact­ly, went into Snap!‘s “Rhythm Is a Dancer,” Moby’s “Porce­lain,” Skrillex’s “First of the Year,” or James Hype and Miggy Dela Rosa’s “Fer­rari,” this is your chance.

Those over a cer­tain age may rec­og­nize all the titles of the songs includ­ed on the first twen­ty or so years of the video’s time­line, and almost none there­after. But they may well know the bod­ies of work from which they sam­ple, includ­ing those of Aaron Neville, Freeez, Bri­an Wil­son, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Mel­ba Moore. For the last cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions of lis­ten­ers, seek­ing out the sources of a sam­ple in a favorite song has become a reli­able method of dis­cov­er­ing the music of past eras. By the same token, lis­ten­ers already well-versed in the music of those eras can hear it anew in the tracks to which kids are cur­rent­ly danc­ing, work­ing out, or sim­ply “vib­ing.” What­ev­er your gen­er­a­tion, once you hear how “Get Ready for This” was con­struct­ed, you’ll nev­er expe­ri­ence a bas­ket­ball game quite the same way again.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Sam­pling: From the Bea­t­les to the Beast­ie Boys

The Most Icon­ic Hip-Hop Sam­ple of Every Year (1973–2023)

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of Elec­tron­ic Music: A Son­ic Jour­ney from 1929 to 2019

How Gior­gio Moroder & Don­na Summer’s “I Feel Love” Cre­at­ed the “Blue­print for All Elec­tron­ic Dance Music Today” (1977)

How the Fairlight CMI Syn­the­siz­er Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.