Fatboy Slim, born Quentin Leo Cook (aka Norman Cook), began making music in the late 70's as both a DJ and in various bands in England before becoming the bassist for the Housemartins where he enjoyed his first commercial success. Cook was in a couple more bands (frankly, Cook has been in more bands than a cat has lives and it's a bit much to cover all of them in a paragraph) before taking on the persona of Fatboy Slim (moniker chosen because Cook liked its oxymoronic nature) and having even more commercial, as well as critical, success. Cook would go on to release four albums as Fatboy Slim before moving on to more bands and more commercial success. For his career, Cook has used 24 aliases and been in nine different bands, and holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the most top forty singles under different names. He is credited with popularizing the big beat genre of music (and yes, I had to look up big beat music), and has won ten MTV Video Music Awards and two Brit Awards.
Fun Fact: The Housemartins were a Socialist Christian band (take that American Evangelicals), and their first album had the message "Take Jesus--Take Marx--Take Hope" on its back cover.
"Praise You" was released in 1999 as the third single from the album You've Come a Long Way, Baby. It would go on to be a #1 single in the UK (Cook has enjoyed considerably more success in his native UK than here in America) and Iceland, #4 in Canada, #6 in Ireland, and, ahem #36 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States (apparently not nearly enough cool kids here in the States). The album was also #1 in the UK, though only reaching (says the man who has had soooo many albums hit the top 40) #34 on the Billboard 200.
It takes an incredible amount of musical talent to take something so complicated as making a record and make it sound so incredibly simple...but Fatboy Slim pulls it off with honors on "Praise You." Cook uses less than twenty-five different words for the lyrics and repeats the music again and again, but when you've got an admirable aspiration (praise) and a fantastic groove you're often going to have a hell of a hit single. The music is no more than piano, bass, and drums (there may be a synthesizer/organ toward the close), but it's more than enough to drive the melody and the funk. The lyrics may or may not be a reference to God/Jesus (a lover perhaps?), but it makes no matter. Fatboy Slim has created a gem of a song that once again serves as reminder why I've devoted so much of my life to listening to music, and makes it all the worthwhile.
Rap Sheet: "We've come a long, long way together/Through the hard times and the good/I have to celebrate you baby/I have to praise you like I should..."
Enjoy (for those wondering just how funky emaycee is, just take a look at the dancers in the video and know that they are much better than I...):
Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee
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