Venus (Shocking Blue song)
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| “Venus” | |||||
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| Single by The Shocking Blue from the album At Home |
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| B-side | "Hot Sand" | ||||
| Released | 1969 | ||||
| Format | 7" vinyl | ||||
| Recorded | 1969 | ||||
| Genre | Pop/Rock | ||||
| Length | 3:07 | ||||
| Label | Pink Elephant, Metronome, Colossus, Poplandia, Joker, Yugoton | ||||
| Writer(s) | Robbie van Leeuwen | ||||
| Producer | Robbie van Leeuwen | ||||
| Certification | Gold (RIAA) | ||||
| The Shocking Blue singles chronology | |||||
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| “Venus” | ||||||||||||
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| Single by Bananarama from the album True Confessions |
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| B-side | "White Train" | |||||||||||
| Released | May 1986 | |||||||||||
| Format | 7" vinyl, 12" vinyl | |||||||||||
| Recorded | December 1985 | |||||||||||
| Genre | Pop/Dance | |||||||||||
| Length | 3:49 | |||||||||||
| Label | London Records | |||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Robbie van Leeuwen | |||||||||||
| Producer | Stock Aitken Waterman | |||||||||||
| Certification | Gold (RIAA) | |||||||||||
| Bananarama singles chronology | ||||||||||||
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"Venus" is a 1969 number-one song by the Dutch band The Shocking Blue, which again reached number one in 1986 in a cover version by Bananarama. The composition has been featured in films and television shows and commercials and covered dozens of times by artists around the world.
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[edit] Shocking Blue
Released in late 1969 as a single from the album At Home, The Shocking Blue's single reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on February 7, 1970. RIAA certification came on January 28, 1970 for selling over one million copies in the USA, garnering a Gold Record award.
The song's music and lyrics are written by Robbie van Leeuwen, the band's guitarist, sitarist and background vocalist, who also produced. Van Leeuwen used "The Banjo Man" on the Winkin', Blinkin' and Nod, a 1963 album by The Big 3 with Mama Cass Elliot on vocals as main inspiration.
Shocking Blue - Venus (Original) excerpt
[edit] Shocking Blue version in popular culture
- Included in the film The Brady Bunch Movie
- Included in the film Grumpier Old Men
- Included in the film Zonder Zelda
- Included in the film Remember The Titans
- Parodied by the Muppets for a television public service announcement about the V-chip and TV ratings.
- Sharon Watts (played by Letitia Dean) sang "Venus" in an episode of EastEnders shortly after its release.
- D.J. Tanner (Candace Cameron) and her best friend Kimmy Gibbler (Andrea Barber) sang "Venus" with Jesse Katsopolis (John Stamos) in a season one episode of Full House when he was teaching them how to succeed in a band.
- A Spanish version was played on the Prison Break episode Good Fences.
- The popular Canadian teen drama series program Degrassi: The Next Generation, which is known for naming each installment after an 80s hit song, named a two-part installment after this song.
[edit] Shocking Blue version on the charts
| Chart (1970) | Peak position |
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| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 1 |
| Belgium singles chart | 1 |
| French singles chart | 1 |
| German singles chart | 1 |
| Italy singles chart | 1 |
| Spanish singles chart | 1 |
| Japan Oricon Singles Chart | 2 |
| UK Singles Chart | 8 |
[edit] Bananarama version
"Venus" had been a part of Bananarama's repertoire for several years before they actually recorded it. The team's three members, Sara Dallin, Siobhan Fahey, and Keren Woodward, had the idea of turning the song into a dance music tune, but they met with resistance from their producers at the time, Steve Jolley and Tony Swain. Undaunted, the women brought the idea to the production trio of Stock, Aitken, and Waterman, or S.A.W., who had just recently scored a global hit producing Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)."
Dallin, Fahey, and Woodward had nearly completed recording their third album, titled True Confessions, with Jolley and Swain, and being fans of the Dead or Alive selection, they sought out the SAW team in order to make their version of "Venus" sound like "You Spin Me Round." Ironically, Stock, Aitken and Waterman also resisted the idea because they believed that "Venus" would not make a good dance record. After persistence by the women, SAW relented, and the result was a worldwide smash. Bananarama's "Venus" went to number one in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Mexico, and South Africa. It hit number two in Germany and Hong Kong and was a top ten success in Italy, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Venezuela, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and their native UK (#8 on UK Singles Chart).
The music video to the song received extensive play on MTV across the world and presented Bananarama in various costumes, including a she-devil, a French temptress, a vampiress, and several Grecian goddesses; only in one sequence of the video, however, was The Birth of Venus, the painting by Sandro Botticelli, reenacted. The video marked a pivotal shift towards a more glamourous and sexual image that contrasted with the tomboyish style of their earlier work.
The collaboration on "Venus" led Bananarama and SAW to work together on the group's follow-up album Wow! the following year.
Bananarama has since re-recorded the track for their 2001 album Exotica and it was recently remixed by Marc Almond, with re-recorded vocals, and included on their 2005 album Drama.
[edit] Bananarama version in popular culture
- Included in the film Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
- Included in the film American Wedding
- The music video was seen and commented on by Beavis and Butthead.
- The song is a major part of Schick advertisements.
- It was the first ever song which a contestant on the UK version of Don't Forget the Lyrics failed to complete
[edit] Bananarama version on the charts
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[edit] Other cover versions
On July 18, 1981, Dutch act Stars on 45 reached number one with a medley which included the opening guitar riff from "Venus", which itself had been borrowed—stolen, Pete Townshend alleged—from The Who's Pinball Wizard. Five years later, British girl group Bananarama covered the song and likewise scored a number one on the Billboard Hot 100. This arguably made it the only song in the history of the Billboard charts to hit number one by three different artists, even though the Stars on 45 song medley only included a portion of it.
In 1990, Italian dance group Don Pablo's Animals scored a UK number-three hit with an instrumental cover version of the song that featured a sample of the original version, and also a sample of James Brown's voice at the beginning, saying, "We're gonna do a song that you've never heard before", lifted from Brown's 1988 hit "The Payback Mix (Part One)."
When auditioning for the Spice Girls in the early '90s, Victoria Beckham recorded a version of the song for a demo tape, never actually intending it to be released. However, the original recording has since leaked onto the Internet.
Stefanie Sun (Simplified Chinese: 孙燕姿; Traditional Chinese: 孫燕姿), a Singaporean singer-songwriter, made an album (Start自選集) containing several cover versions, including "Venus", "Hey Jude", and "Silent All These Years" in 2002.
The winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2004, Ruslana, has recorded this song. Norwegian act Erlend Øye also recorded part of the song in a medley on his album that was part of the DJ-Kicks series.
Japanese singer Hitomi featured a cover of the song as the B-side to her "Japanese Girl" single in 2005. This version was used as the theme song in commercials for the Gillette Venus razor in 2006. Those commercials featured Hitomi herself on a rock of a lagoon in Hawaii. (A different version was also included in North American ads by the same company.) Koda Kumi recorded the same song for Japanese Gillette commercials the following year.
The Russian children's band, Street Magic (Volshebniki Dvora) (Волшебники Двора), released a cover version of the song in 2005 on their album "Hit Parade" (Хит-парад). Its lead vocals were performed by band member Denis Uzkov (Денис Усков).
[edit] "Shizgarah", or Venus in Russian urban folklore
In spite of total ignoring by the soviet mass-media, the Shocking Blue song quickly become a number one hit in 1970's Russia, especially among street youth close to hippies and hippie-like "hooligans" subcultures. Due to simple arrangement and attractive dance rhythm, "Venus" was adopted and performed by thousands of amateur singers, accompanied themselves with acoustic guitars as well as by electric bands which performed it on dancing parties. Thus, the song of a Dutch band become a prominent phenomena of Russian urban folklore and as was admitted by many people, an unofficial "anthem of the generation".
A countless number of variants of Russian lyrics existed for this song, but traditionally it was performed using gibberish or scat singing phonetically inspired by the sounds of original English lyrics (hardly intelligible after numerous copying on low-end class tape-recorders). In this variant, the first line of the chorus ("She's got it") usually pronounced as "Shizgarah" ("Шизгáра") [sheez-ga'-rah] that became a commonly adopted name of this song in Russia (including even those who could understand the original text). The original song name, "Venus", was unusual.
[edit] Legacy
The popular Canadian teen drama series program Degrassi: The Next Generation, which is known for naming each installment after an 80s hit song, named a two-part installment after this song.
| Preceded by "I Want You Back" by The Jackson 5 |
Billboard Hot 100 number one single (Shocking Blue version) February 7, 1970 |
Succeeded by "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)"/"Everybody Is a Star" by Sly & the Family Stone |
| Preceded by "Higher Love" by Steve Winwood |
Billboard Hot 100 number-one single (Bananarama version) September 6, 1986 |
Succeeded by "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin |
| Preceded by "I Wanna Be a Cowboy" by Boys Don't Cry |
New Zealand RIANZ Singles Chart number-one single (Bananarama version) September 12, 1986 - September 26, 1986 |
Succeeded by "Slice of Heaven" by Dave Dobbyn |
| Preceded by "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)" by Samantha Fox |
Australia ARIA Singles Chart number-one single (Bananarama version) September 15, 1986 - October 27, 1986 |
Succeeded by "You're the Voice" John Farnham |
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