4 March 2000
Dare I suggest that, since it was recorded in Clontarf Cricket Club, ‘Maniac 2000’ is a West Brit? Best not. To be fair, cricket in Ireland is played and watched by plenty of solid Irish citizens. Also, ‘Maniac 2000’ had barely topped our charts before Ireland elevated it to the pantheon of the immersion, the Toy Show and the Sunday-night panic at the theme from Glenroe as things that are quintessentially Irish: ours alone, loved and grasped only by us, guaranteed to raise a smile and a like on Irish social media. Instead I’ll stick to the question I’ve been asking about every Irish number one: why?
One thing to note is that ‘Maniac 2000’ was already a home-grown pop-cultural phenomenon before it ever came out as a single. After all, it’s a live recording of the track being played and performed to a packed Dublin dancefloor (yes, in Clontarf Cricket Club) singing along to every word, having raved and partied to it for a few years by that stage. Also, before ‘Maniac 2000’ there was ‘Maniac’ 1995, a similar rave-up by an act called 4 Rhythm which reached no. 28 in the Irish charts. (The chorus vocals of Dublin-based singer Shelley Bukspan on ‘Maniac 2000’ are actually sampled from the 1995 ‘Maniac’.) However, that really only explains why it topped the charts in the first place. We’ve already seen ‘9 PM (Till I Come)’, ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee)’ and ‘Silence’ at number one as evidence of the huge ’99-’00 popularity of dance music in Ireland. But ‘Maniac 2000’ stayed at number one for ten weeks, the same length of time as those three other dance chart-toppers put together. Again, why?
Taking those ten weeks at number one as our clue, let’s look back at other colossal Irish chart-toppers and see if they shed any light on ‘Maniac 2000’. ‘Put ‘Em Under Pressure’ is distilled essence of Italia ’90, the collective mania that happened in Ireland at the same time as the 1990 World Cup in Italy. ‘I Useta Lover’ by The Saw Doctors embodied that post-Italia ’90 new-found Irish positivity and cheekiness, albeit by setting the ’90s stage culchie to Galway trad pub rock. ‘Riverdance’ was when traditional Irish music and dance, or at least a Carroll’s Irish Gifts version of same, became a global marketable product. ‘Aon Focal Eile’ was an all-ages novelty hit in that ’90s stage culchie idiom. ‘Candle In The Wind 1997’ was a pre-social media outlet for the shock at Diana’s death, plus this time actual West Brits. What these records have in common is how they tapped into some wider event or vibe going on. Can we say the same about ‘Maniac 2000’? Let’s try.
So, what was happening in Ireland in 2000? Well, I was there, a young and carefree student up in Dublin. What I remember about that time—what I feel about that time—was a tremendous youthful buzz in the city and across the country. But don’t just rely on my memory and synapses. Check any official statistics you know or trust and they’ll show that Ireland’s net migration had been positive in the preceding years and our economy was picking up. In theory that meant more young people in Ireland, with more money in their pocket, and with more opportunities and optimism. (Also, we’re at the start of the Celtic Tiger era.) Of course in practice this won’t have been the experience of everyone but as a generalisation I think it’s fair to say that Ireland in 2000 was buzzing. ‘Maniac 2000’ captures that.
Still, nostalgia for Y2K and its dancefloor bangers doesn’t explain the last part of the puzzle: why ‘Maniac 2000’ remains an Irish darling two decades later. For that final part, I’ll turn to another chart-topper of yore, one which has a strong Irish connection and also still causes wedding receptions to kick off: ‘Come On Eileen’. I don’t mean in quality; the endearingly awkward lyrics of ‘Maniac 2000’ (my favourites are “Yeah, yeah, funky yeah!” and “Life – it has no meaning!”) are more at the level of ‘Ice Ice Baby’. Also, it sounds like it was recorded on a Walkman. However, like ‘Come On Eileen’ it captures how music electrifies and connects us, and recreates that buzz itself to share it on again. They both even have a chant-along break, though for ‘Maniac 2000’ it’s your basic “Oggie oggie oggie! Oi oi oi!” (You can picture DJ Ötzi looking and listening on from Austria at that bit, a massive cartoon lightbulb pinging on over his head. That’s for another day.)
Ultimately, though, listening to ‘Maniac 2000’ in cold blood as a mere single leaves me with an ‘Ice Ice Baby’ aftertaste and a DJ Ötzi foreboding. Maybe you really do need to be on a night out, or pumping it on your car stereo down some boreen, or in Australia feeling homesick, to feel it. Were this site called Irish Buzzes I’d be giving it the golden ’10’, but it isn’t. I probably wouldn’t have got into Clontarf Cricket Club anyway either.
Irish Number Ones 