Welcome to our second installment of 120 Minutes, a unique video showcase that features the best of 90s music. Though the sound of the decade was more raw more emotional tonight I have chosen a song that in many ways harkens back to the 80s with its heavy synth and danceable beat. I am of course referring to Saint Etienne's 1994 UK dance hit Like A Motorway.
Like A Motorway is, in my opinion, one of the greatest dance songs of all time. Turn it up!
Saint Etienne have a knack for unearthing and reinventing lost songs. Take their brilliant version of Who Do You Think You Are?, which began life as a one-hit wonder for the long-forgotten Candlewick Green, who won Opportunity Knocks in 1973. But this, from 1994’s Tiger Bay, is Saint Etienne’s masterpiece. The melody is that of the traditional folk song Silver Dagger, most famously sung by Joan Baez, which tells the story of a mother who won’t let her daughter marry. The pulsing motorik rhythms and the modern-world simile of its title (life was “like a motorway”, for this girl, “dull, grey and long till you came along”) make it perfect for the post-industrial, post-rave generation. - The Guardian (UK)
Saint Etienne are an English indie dance/indie pop band from London, formed in 1990. The band consists of Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs. They are named after the French football team AS Saint-Étienne.
Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs were childhood friends and former music journalists. They originally planned that Saint Etienne would use a variety of different lead singers, and their first album, Foxbase Alpha features several vocalists, including Moira Lambert and Donna Savage. However, after working with Sarah Cracknell on "Nothing Can Stop Us", they decided to make her the permanent vocalist, and Cracknell has written or co-written many of the band's songs.
Saint Etienne were associated with the "indie dance" genre in the early 1990s. Their typical approach was to combine sonic elements of the dance-pop that emerged in the wake of the so-called Second Summer of Love (e.g. samples and digitally synthesized sounds) with an emphasis on songwriting involving romantic and introspective themes more commonly associated with traditional British pop and rock music. Early work demonstrated the influence of '60s soul, '70s dub and rock as well as '80s dance music, giving them a broad palette of sounds and a reputation for eclecticism. Years later, The Times wrote that they "deftly fused the grooviness of Swinging Sixties London with a post-acid house backbeat". Their first two albums, Foxbase Alpha and So Tough feature sounds chiefly associated with house music, such as standard TR-909 drum patterns and Italo house piano riffs mixed with original sounds, notable by the use of found dialogue, sampled from 1960s British realist cinema.
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