Track #20 - “Groove Is in the Heart” by Deee-Lite (1990)

From the album World Clique

Music and lyrics by Dmitry Brill, Chung Dong-Hwa, Kierin Kirby, Herbie Hancock, & Jonathan Davis

Performed by:

Lady Miss Kier – lead and background vocals

DJ Dmitry – turntables, programming

DJ Towa Tei – turntables, programming

Q-Tip - rap  

Bootsy Collins – background vocals

Maceo Parker – saxophone   

Fred Wesley – trombone

US Billboard Hot 100 - #4; US Billboard Dance Club Songs - #1; US R&B/Hip-Hop - #28

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs - #233

The depth of hula groove moves us to the nth loop

We’re gonna groove to Horton Hears a Who-who

I couldn’t ask for another

No, I couldn’t ask for another

DJ Soul (soul!) was on a roll

I’ve been told he can’t be sold

He’s not vicious or malicious

Just de-lovely and delicious

I couldn’t ask for another

I was recently in the car with my wife when a Rod Stewart song came on the radio. “Wow,” she commented, “Rod Stewart, he’s gotta be like 80 years old.” My reply went something like, “He can’t be that old,” but of course, out came the smartphone and within seconds we learned that Rod Stewart, is in fact, 77 years old. We kept it going…Mick Jagger soon followed (79), and by the time I typed in “How old is Billy Joel?” (73), I was getting suggestions from Google: Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen; I could go on. Obviously, as we all know, Google will learn from you and almost get inside your head, figuring If they want to know how old Rod Stewart is, they must want to know how old Mick Jagger is, etc., therefore the parade of old rock stars auto populating the search bar. While this is useful, it’s also a bit terrifying (cue the Terminator 2 theme; Skynet has become self-aware). But artificial intelligence and the end of the world aside, search engines can settle arguments, and help you find movies, TV shows and books if you know a character, actor or even famous quote from said movie, TV show or book. But where Google, and apps like Spotify and Shazam are most useful is finding music. How many times have you heard a snippet of a song on TV or in a movie, hummed it to yourself a thousand times and still couldn’t figure it out? Obviously nowadays it requires little effort; pull out your phone, open Shazam, let the app listen to the song playing and you have your answer. When Christine and I watched Little Fires Everywhere, and Big Little Lies I think we Shazam-ed every single episode because the soundtrack was so good. I’ve done the same thing for This Is Us and Grey’s Anatomy; have the app listen for a few seconds, build your playlist and away you go. Not only do you get the title and artist, but you might also get recommendations to similar music that will send you down rabbit holes for the better part of the day. And best of all, no earworms as you drive yourself nuts trying to figure it out. But if you grew up before digital music and smartphones as my generation did, you had to rely on radio DJ’s, or word-of-mouth to solve those earworms for you. I can’t tell you how many times I sat in the car waiting for the DJ to say the name of the song that just played when I was younger; sometimes it paid off, and sometimes they just played another song and I had to wait another day. And sometimes (well, one time), there was a song and band I didn’t figure out for years. Alternative-goth band Ministry released their hit “Revenge” in 1983; I probably didn’t hear it on alternative radio until the early 90s, but the timing was never right to discover the title of the song or the band. All I kept hearing was the song’s chorus in my head: You did it again, you did it again, you did it again and again and again, ho, ho! Imagine having that stuck in your head and you have no idea what it is. The worst part is no one knew what I was talking about when I tried to hum it or sing it to people to try and figure it out. Finally, in the early 2000s, I just happened to be at Judy’s cousin Chris’ house, and he pulled out a mixtape he had from the 80s, and that mysterious song began to play, and I heard that refrain, …again and again and again…I was practically jumping up and down. “Who is this? What’s the name of this song??” Chris looked at me and said, without missing a beat, “This is Ministry, I think it’s called ‘Revenge’?” I felt like Gollum and the One Ring; “Revenge”…my precious!! I would not actually own that song until I found it on iTunes a few years later, but at least the quest for the title of the mysterious alt-goth song was over. My generation also relied on our version of music apps and Google: the record store clerk. If you’ve seen the film High Fidelity with John Cusack as the owner of a local record store in Chicago, you might know what I’m talking about. His character in the film, along with his two employees (played by Jack Black and Todd Louiso) are all-knowing encyclopedias of music; they engage with customers, discuss, and often criticize their taste in music, but sell very few records. I never interacted with record store employees as quirky or knowledgeable as the characters in High Fidelity, but there was a local establishment called Record Stop that I used to visit often that was owned by a music guru and sold anything and everything you could possibly want musically. And of course, there were the local mall establishments: Record World, Sam Goody, and later The Wiz. All these retailers routinely took my hard-earned money and could usually solve my musical conundrums and help me find what I wanted. But in the early 90s, a dance track that had been an international smash had me stumped enough that I had a couple of record store employees looking at me like I might be crazy when I asked them for it. In fact, it was only after I embarrassed myself humming and whistling that they took mercy on me, found what I was looking for, and sent me on my way.

My quest for Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is In the Heart” began in 1980, when Lady Miss Kier, born Kierin Magenta Kirby, arrived in New York City to study fashion. After dropping out of the Fashion Institute of Technology, she discovered the NYC club scene, and began to design her own eccentric, garish looking clothes and selling them to club patrons. In 1982, she met Ukrainian born DJ Dmitry Brill, known professionally as Supa DJ Dmitry. The two began dating, and according to an interview Kier did with djmag.com, they were “out at least five nights a week, him in the DJ booth and myself on his dance floor.” They avoided the ever present and easily accessible drugs that were associated with the club scene in the early 80s, and entrenched themselves in the music and fashion instead; “...we were there to dance,” Kier later said. However in 1986, after a one-time experiment with LSD, Brill and Kier wrote three songs while tripping on the drug, and Deee-Lite was born. In 1988, they were joined by Japanese DJ Towa Tei, and together they began to work on recording their first album as a band. It was around this time that Dmitry wrote a letter and sent a tape to funk legend William Earl “Bootsy” Collins, a bassist and vocalist who had played with James Brown, and the bands Parliament and Funkadelic. Collins loved the demo and offered to collaborate with the trio. He would later recruit former Parliament horn players Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley to play on the album that became World Clique. The single “Groove Is In the Heart” was born from no less than eight samples, most prominently the looping bassline from Herbie Hancock’s “Bring Down the Birds”, and “Get Up” by Vernon Burch, which lifted the drums, crowd noise, and the prominent slide whistle that would later mortify your host. Kier had written the lyrics after hearing Hancock’s bass loop, but before the song was fully realized. DJs Brill and Towa later added all the samples, and other wonderful noises that add to the song’s party vibe. Up and coming rapper Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest would also contribute a rap breakdown in the middle of the song, a performance he would record in two takes in the studio. Upon its release in August of 1990, “Groove Is In the Heart”, with its infectious beat and fusion of funk and dance styles promptly landed in DJ booths and on dance floors around the world, and marched up music charts in several countries. It reached #1 in Australia and was in the Top 10 in several European countries, and it was the #1 dance track in the US and Canada in late 1990. It was also certified Gold in the US with 500,000 units sold. In short, if you were in a dance club in late 1990 into 1991, you probably heard “Groove Is In the Heart”, or another track from World Clique. As you might have surmised by now, I completely missed all of this; at that time, I was not going out much, and I was not listening to any dance or hip-hop music at all. In fact, that summer of 1990 and later heading into fall I was in my discovery of alternative music phase, and since I was not 21 yet and did not possess a fake ID, I missed the early Deee-Lite phenomenon in the dance clubs.

The first time I heard “Groove Is In the Heart” was probably early 1992, and I remember pretty clearly being at work, at my accounting internship. I was between semesters, so the owner of the firm was letting me work as many hours as I wanted. On this particular day, it was just me and the office manager, a very hip and sassy middle-aged woman named Fran. That small successful accounting firm may have been owned by a prominent CPA/attorney, but Fran ran that place like she owned it. She knew everything about the business, knew all the clients on a first name basis and kept everything on the rails at all times. Plus, she was just great to work with, and put up with all my questions when I first started and didn’t know a thing about working an office job. Whenever the owner, an older gentleman named Martin (I know, another Martin…I swear I’m not making this up), and his associate Steven were out of the office, Fran would crank up the radio and we’d chat while working. That winter day she was listening to Hot 97, a New York City station that played a lot of soul/R&B and hip hop. As I mentioned when we discussed “Freedom ‘90”, I had started hearing a lot of this music now that I was going out with my friends again, and I found myself wanting to know more about the artists and was thinking of adding some of it to my collection. So, I was familiar with some of the songs I heard that day, but for the most part, I phased in and out, just enjoying the soundtrack to pass the day. Then I caught a song that sounded like it was playing over a party; at first I thought it was Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up”, the 1977 dance hit that uses chatter underneath the mix to give it a party effect. But the tempo of this song was faster, and there was female singing, so it couldn’t be the Marvin Gaye song. Then there was this whistle, actually a slide whistle, right in the middle of the song…bizarre, but cool I guess. I found myself tapping my pen on the desk…I liked this, but what was it? Then the DJ came on as the record was ending, probably saying something like, “It’s a cold sunny day here in New York City, and that was ‘Rumors in the Heart’…” No band name, but I had a title…at least I thought I had a title. A few weeks later, I was wandering around the South Shore Mall in Bay Shore, and decided I was going to track down that peppy dance song I heard on the radio, so I went to Record World and tried to find the single by the song title I had, “Rumors in the Heart.” I didn’t have a band name, so I looked at the cassette singles on the wall, one by one, to try and track down the song; I was unsuccessful. I was now relegated to seeking out help if I really wanted to find the song, so I headed over to the counter to find what I hoped would be a knowledgeable record store clerk. There was a girl behind the counter, probably around my age, and a slightly older guy, probably an assistant manager. I said hello, received the perfunctory smile in return from the girl, and she asked, “Can I help you?”  Here is the exchange that followed:

 Me: Yeah, I’m looking for a song called “Rumors in the Heart”, do you have it?

Clerk: “Rumors in the Heart”? I’ve never heard of that…do you know who sings it?

Me: No, I don’t…I heard it on Hot 97 a couple of weeks ago, but don’t know the band.

Clerk: Are you sure you don’t mean, “Rumours”, by Fleetwood Mac? We have that…

Me: No, it’s definitely not Fleetwood Mac…it’s a dance song

Clerk: Well, maybe you can hum a little of it?

 So, at this point, I should remind you that this is almost 18 months after “Groove Is In the Heart” was all over the radio and Billboard charts, so it was probably not top of mind to this particular Record World employee, especially when there was a band called Nirvana who had the #1 album in the country at the time. If I walked in there when the Deee-Lite song was first popular, I’m quite sure this person would have put two and two together and realized what I was talking about. But at this moment, there was no putting anything together. She asked her partner if he had ever heard of “Rumors in the Heart”.

 Clerk #2: “Rumors in the Heart”? Are you sure that’s what it’s called?

Me: Yeah, I mean, I think so. It’s a dance song…it sounds like there’s people talking underneath the music.

Clerk #2: (now more confused): Talking? And it’s a dance song? Do you know any of the words? Dude, you’re gonna have to give us a little more…

This was not going well. I didn’t know any of the lyrics; all I had was the beat in my head, but no decipherable lyrics to recite. But…I had the slide whistle. That was pretty distinctive, and it was all I had, so right there, in the middle of Record World in Bay Shore, I imitated the slide whistle in the middle of that dance track I wanted to own so badly. After hearing me doing my best slide whistle, a lightbulb must have gone off because the girl said, “That’s ‘GROOVE Is in the Heart’ not ‘RUMORS in the Heart’! The two clerks had a laugh at my expense, and how could they not? That was a ridiculous display of noisemaking combined with pathetic cluelessness just to find a song I had heard on the radio. But the guy turned around, grabbed a cassette off the stack behind him, and handed it to me. “Do you want the whole album, or just the single? Because this is just the single.” I took the cassette from him and said I would hold off on getting the whole album for now, handed over my $3, and got the hell out of there, leaving the two store clerks with a story I’m sure they shared with the rest of the Record World staff. But I quickly forgot about the whole scene as I returned to my car, unwrapped the cassette from the cellophane covering, and slammed it into the tape deck. After the cassette clicked into place and began to play, there was sort of an old-timey horn riff, followed by a female voice declaring, “We’re going to dance, and have some fun”, then there were bongos and percussion, followed by the party chatter noises I remembered from the radio a few weeks ago. Then the bass loop and the rest of the vocals kicked in, a lot of the lyrics non-sensical, like “my supper dish, my succotash wish”, and “we’re gonna groove to Horton Hears a Who.” But it was so much fun; it had a psychedelic feel to it, and I could not imagine how you could avoid dancing if this song came on at a bar or club. There were two mixes of the song on the cassette so I just let it keep playing on my drive home, listening to it 3 or 4 times through. Over the next few weeks, I would finally see the video, with Lady Miss Kier singing and dancing her way through multiple outfit changes in front of trippy color backgrounds, while DJ’s Towa and Dmitry spun records and showed off their own moves. Bootsy Collins also makes appearances in the video, sporting oversized star-shaped glasses and platform boots, and playing the looping bassline. And rapper Q-Tip performs his rap breakdown in the middle of the song, his head floating and bobbing around a kaleidoscope background. You know how when you’re considering buying a particular car, and you start to see that car on the road all the time? That’s what happened with “Groove Is in the Heart” that year. I started hearing it at just about every bar and club I went to and seeing the video whenever I had MTV tuned in. To this day, I still don’t know how I missed it when it first came out, but I have no regrets doing that slide whistle solo at the record store that day. “Groove Is in the Heart” remains one of my favorite songs ever, and like “Freedom ‘90” is one of the few songs I will still dance to. And here’s the video; I dare you not to dance or at least smile and tap your foot. 😊

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Next time…I finally get to see one of my favorite bands of all-time live and hear the origin story of one of their biggest hits from the early 80s.

P.S.

 Deee-Lite would follow up World Clique with two more albums: Infinity Within in 1992, and Dewdrops in the Garden in 1994. Neither would achieve the mainstream success of World Clique but the group did have six #1 hits on the Billboard Dance chart during their five years together. DJ Towa never joined Kier and Dmitry on any of the tours, preferring to work in the studio and at home. In 1994, he left the band, and when Kier and Dmitry’s relationship fractured after their 1994 tour supporting Dewdrops in the Garden, Deee-Lite disbanded. Kier has continued to write and produce songs, and perform as a DJ and singer, and is considered somewhat of a fashion icon. DJ Dmitry lives in Germany, and continues to produce and collaborate with artists from all over the world. DJ Towa has recorded several solo albums, and has played with Japanese supergroup METAFIVE. In numerous interviews over the years, the members of Deee-Lite have recounted the making and recording of “Groove Is in the Heart” and remain proud of its iconic place in dance and club music history. I’ve heard “Groove Is in the Heart” mentioned on one-hit wonder countdowns and to classify it that way is simply not accurate. World Clique spawned another hit single, “Power of Love”, and the album itself is a perfect story of early 90s dance and club music. In a time before asking permission to use samples was a thing, Deee-Lite took full advantage and put together songs that sound like they could be live mixes. They were also one of the first examples of artists from diverse backgrounds and different parts of the world collaborating, and all before the internet and virtual meetings were possible. Kier, Dimitry and Towa were in the same room, creating those tracks. There’s a certain level of romance and nostalgia in the way their music was made, and most important, the songs have held up all these years later, and still sound unique. I’ll go out on a limb and figure you’ve heard “Groove Is in the Heart” at a wedding or a night out, but World Clique is worth a listen. And speaking of those samples; this is the best link I could find for the eight prominent samples featured in “Groove Is in the Heart”, but there are probably more. If you’re familiar with the song you can probably figure out where each sample appears, so it’s worth checking out and clicking on each one.

I tried to think of another time when I butchered a song title as badly as “Groove Is in the Heart” and I wasn’t able to. I’ve listened to A LOT of music over the years, and somehow all of it has remained in the steel safe that is my memory. Don’t ask me what I had for breakfast, but ask me what song was playing in the car when I got my first flat tire (“Light My Fire” by The Doors), and I can tell you in two seconds. Just one of those things, I guess. Nowadays I resist the temptation to just pick up my phone and look up a song or band if I need to; I will actually challenge myself to figure it out, but I have to admit, I do cave to the almighty Google sometimes. If you ask me, it was much more fun 30 years ago. 😊

Finally…we’ve reached Track 20!! I’ve updated the 50 At 50 Playlist on Spotify, which at 20 songs, is a very respectable playlist. If you’ve tuned into each post, THANK YOU for reading and following me on Instagram and Spotify. I will include more playlists in 2023, and get back to weekly posts, and more trivia too. Happy Holidays and a Healthy & Musical 2023 to you! 😊

See you next time…

 JS

12/21/2022