Nightcrawlers 'Push The Feeling On'

Chart Peak: 3 [previous mix 22 in 1994]
YouTube

'Push The Feeling On' has been one of the biggest club records of the past couple of years... This new remix finally pushed the Glasgow band into the upper reaches of the national chart when it peaked at No. 3 in March '95.

Back in 1995 I remember this video never seemed to be off MTV, which considering that it looked every bit as cheap then as it does now seems quite a good return on their investment. We used to joke that it sounded like he was singing "You're lying in a pool of sperm," a phrase which in this case thankfully didn't make it into the song title. In fact this track has a bit of topicality about it since the hit version is a remix by MK [the specific version here is MK Dub Revisited Edit] and at time of writing, another MK remix has put 'My Head Is A Jungle' by Wankelmut and Emma Louise into the Top 10 (and possibly into contention for Now 89).

What I didn't realise until this week was just how much MK had done to this record. I finally looked up the 1992 original of 'Push The Feeling On', and it's barely recognisable as the same track, it's more of an Acid Jazz/ funk track than a dance single. And hence the explanation for the indecipherable lyric: it's just brief samples from the first verse of the song (the annotations on that YouTube video show where they come from), not even complete words in some cases, so no wonder John Reid struggles to mime to it in the video. Even the few repeats of the original chorus seem almost like they're there on sufferance to make the song identifiable - the main hookline is definitely the synth part that MK himself added. In fact, I have to wonder whether he actually disliked the original and decided to use as little as possible of it. Whatever the reasoning, he and Reid clearly did rather well out of it.

After the original MK remix had done well in clubs and become a minor hit, he returned with this slightly revised version, which was credited officially to "Nightcrawlers featuring John Reid" (number of permanent members of Nightcrawlers who weren't John Reid: zero) and had one of the biggest dance hits of the 1990s - something which only spawned further remixes. Making hay with this change in career direction, a whole barrage of suspiciously similar Nightcrawlers singles including the shamelessly titled 'Let's Push It' and 'Don't Let The Feeling Go'. He later wrote a Number One for Westlife, but this inane yet unforgettable track remains his calling card. If such people as Pitbull fans exist, they might find this part of the album somewhat familiar since both this and (indirectly) 'The Bomb' were sampled on later hits by him.

Available on: The Pete Tong Collection