TOP TEN
IT’S GETTIN’ KINDA HEAVY IN A WEEK OF JAM HOT BASSLINES, BLISSED-OUT BEATLES, SAXY SOLOING, ENDLESS LOVING – AND THE LOVE SHACK, BABY!
STEVE O’BRIEN
WEEK ENDING 31 MARCH 1990
THE POWER SNAP!(ARISTA)
One of the most ubiquitous songs of the 90s, Snap!’s The Power was forged around a rap from Chill Rob G’s 1985 track Let The Words Flow and a sample of singer Jocelyn Brown’s dance classic from the same year, Love’s Gonna Get You. For the main vocal, Snap! (actually the German production team of Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti) sought out Chaka Khan, only for the R&B ledge to suggest Penny Ford, her main backup singer. Ford took the gig, jetted off to Deutschland and spent three days working on the song, with Münzing and Anzilotti plying her with Champagne and cigarettes. “I just sang the first thing that came off the top of my head,” Ford later told Songfacts, “because I didn’t understand that music, and I didn’t think I’d ever have to hear it again.” The eventual single replaced Chill Rob G’s rap with one by Turbo B, whom the production duo discovered at an American army base in Germany.