What Is Love
| "What Is Love" | |
|---|---|
| Song | |
| B-side | "Sing About Love" |
"What Is Love" is a 1993 dance track by the singer Haddaway, popular with club DJs. Recorded in the early '90s, it later experienced a revival as the song from the Saturday Night Live "Roxbury Guys" sketches, which were later made into the 1998 feature film A Night at the Roxbury. The song was also featured as the background music for the previous night's NBA highlights on NBC's NBA Showtime in the mid-to-late '90s. The music video featured clips from Metropolis. Since 1994, it has been played prior to the opening pitch of every Tulane Green Wave home baseball game.
The song peaked at #2 in the United Kingdom and Germany, but it reached #1 in thirteen other countries, all of them European or Asian. In the United States the song reached #11 on the Billboard Hot 100, and #12 in Australia.
Covers and samples
Haddaway's song was sampled by Atlanta crunk/hip-hop group Crime Mob on a song also called "What Is Love". The track was leaked to the Internet in late 2006, and appeared on their second album Hated On Mostly, released March 2007. In June 2007, José Galisteo recorded it on his debut album, Remember. The song was also given an industrial makeover by the band The MDP. In 2006, Leningrad Cowboys recorded a hard rock cover of the song on their album, Zombies Paradise. The song has also been covered by The Gossip, with lead singer Beth Ditto changing the lyrics to "When Is Lunch?, Baby I'm Hungry". Most recently, Irish shoegaze band Razor Stilettos covered the song at their gig supporting The Coronas and Finnish Dark Wave Rocker Kinetic Control put it on their debut album "Lack Of Divine Inspiration".
Cultural references
The song was played in the 1994 "Jeff Duncan is Way cooler then Toni Markic" episode of the television show My So-Called Life, in the 2003 movie Just Married, in the trailer for the 1994 film Monkey Trouble, in the Northern European versions of the 2005 computer animated film Madagascar (replacing "I Like to Move It"), in WCW as Jeff Duncan's theme song, in Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance", in a tamil version in the 1994 Indian movie Gentleman. This dance was taken from the Saturday Night Live sketch and its subsequent movie. It also featured on the game Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore, in a Diet Pepsi Max commercial during Super Bowl XLII in the United States that also featured Chris Kattan, who played one of the brothers in the Roxbury sketches and movie, also telling people who are bobbing their heads to the beat to "Stop it!". The song was sung by Steve Carell and Ed Helms portraying Michael Scott and Andy Bernard, respectively, in Season 3, Episode 8 ("The Merger") of "The Office", and a guy was singing the song to a girl in an Australian Dairy Farmers Moove flavoured milk advertisement. The song has become an internet meme via the internet community YTMND often as a juxtaposition with an animated GIF of the Roxbury Guys. There is a mod for the computer game Knytt Stories known as "Don't Eat The Mushroom". If the player chooses to eat the mushroom, then this song plays over a long sequence of strange scenes.
Track listings
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Certifications
| Country | Certification | Date | Sales certified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria[1] | Platinum | October 19, 1993 | 30,000 |
| Germany[2] | Platinum | 1993 | 300,000 |
| Sweden[3] | Gold | July 19, 1993 | 10,000 |
| UK[4] | Gold | July 1, 1993 | 400,000 |
| U.S.[5] | Gold | November 9, 1993 | 500,000 |
Charts
1 "What Is Love - Remixes"
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References
- ^ Austrian certifications ifpi.at (Retrieved August 17, 2008)
- ^ German certifications musikindustrie.de (Retrieved August 17, 2008)
- ^ Swedish certifications Ifpi.se (Retrieved September 11, 2008)
- ^ UK certifications Bpi.co.uk (Retrieved August 17, 2008)
- ^ U.S. certifications riaa.com (Retrieved August 17, 2008)
- ^ australian-charts.com - Haddaway - What Is Love
- ^ Haddaway - What Is Love - austriancharts.at
- ^ danishcharts.com - Haddaway - What Is Love
- ^ dutchcharts.nl - Haddaway - What Is Love
- ^ lescharts.com - Haddaway - What Is Love
- ^ a b German Singles Chart Charts-surfer.de (Retrieved February 26, 2008)
- ^ Irish Singles Chart Irishcharts.ie (Retrieved February 26, 2008)
- ^ norwegiancharts.com - Haddaway - What Is Love
- ^ swedishcharts.com - Haddaway - What Is Love
- ^ Haddaway - What Is Love - hitparade.ch
- ^ UK Singles Chart Everyhit.com (Retrieved February 26, 2008)
- ^ a b c d e Billboard Allmusic.com (Retrieved February 26, 2008)
- ^ "What Is Love - Remix" Hitparade.ch (Retrieved February 10, 2008)
- ^ a b c "What Is Love - Reloaded" Hitparade.ch (Retrieved February 10, 2008)
- ^ 1993 Austrian Singles Chart Austriancharts.at (Retrieved August 17, 2008)
- ^ 1993 Swiss Singles Chart Hitparade.ch (Retrieved August 17, 2008)
External links
- 1993 singles
- Haddaway songs
- Take That songs
- Electronic songs
- Techno dance songs
- Internet memes
- Number-one singles in Austria
- Number-one singles in Belgium
- Number-one singles in Finland
- Number-one singles in France
- Number-one singles in Ireland
- Number-one singles in Italy
- Number-one singles in the Netherlands
- Number-one singles in Norway
- Number-one singles in Spain
- Number-one singles in Switzerland