Eurodance

Eurodance (sometimes also called Europop) is style of dance music, popular in Europe, Oceania and South America during 1990s (1993~1999).

It is characterized by female vocals, with simple chorus, male rap parts, or male vocals, a strong beat from 110 to 150 BPM with synthesizer riffs. One important cliche in eurodance were singed parts that consisted of meaningless lyrics (such as Um-bap-paa-ea-ea Um-bap-paa-oo" in Daze's hit single Superhero).

Eurodance is named from the fact that it was mainly popular in Europe and produced mostly in Italy, Germany, Sweden and Netherlands. In addition to the most popular groups, there were hundreds of Eurodance projects.

Eurodance is very much commercial music. It can be even seen as a some kind of culmination of commerciality in music business. Some producers, like Swedish Max Martin, were behind dozens of bands. If members of band became too demanding, they could be fired. Only few bands survived more than one or two records. The most succesful groups were probably Dutch 2 Unlimited and German Scooter.

Some people think that female vocalists seemed to have been selected rather by their looks than talents. Live performances were mostly play-backs, sometimes different female singer performing in studio recordings than on stage. Many bands, like Captain Jack and DJ Bombay had carefully planned humoristic image. Group called E-rotic got attention with its erotic lyrics and music videos.

Some artists, like Aqua, Daze or Hit'n'Hide are not usually considered eurodance, but fall into bubblegum category. These are, examples included, for some reason mainly Danish.

Other in between cases are Blümchen and Scooter, approaching happy hardcore -genre. Sash!, ATB, Antiloop, that were mostly trance groups or Robert Miles whose music was catogorized dream dance

Eurodance created same kind of hate among many people as disco music in 1970s. Those pop-music listeners, who liked more guitar oriented pop/rock considered eurodance often as cheap, crappy and over-commercial.

Eurodance

Some notable artist in genre include:

See also