Rhythm Is a Dancer by Snap!

Nobody at the label planned to release it, and the rapper on it hated it the first time he heard it. "Rhythm Is a Dancer" by Snap! started as an album cut. It became one of the best-selling singles of 1992 and reached number five in the United States.

Snap! was the studio project of two German producers, Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti, who worked under the aliases Benito Benites and John "Virgo" Garrett III. By the time they made their second album, The Madman's Return, the lineup around them had changed. Singer Penny Ford had left after tensions with rapper Turbo B. The producers asked her to help with arrangements and to find a replacement vocalist in America. Ford had signed with another label by then, so she could no longer sing for the group but could still write for it. She came back with Thea Austin.

Austin sang the chorus and received a writing credit alongside Münzing, Anzilotti and Toni C. The album version had no rap. Instead it carried a spoken-word passage adapted from John Perry Barlow's essay "Being in Nothingness," read by studio engineer Daniel Iribarren. It sat on the record as a bonus track.

Club reaction changed that. DJs pushed the track, and Logic Records took notice. The label arranged a private test at its own discotheque, the Omen. Dancers settled the matter. The song was released in March 1992 on Arista and Logic as the second single from the album.

For the single, Turbo B added a rap stanza to the seven-inch version, despite having rejected the song at first. One line drew complaints: "I'm serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer." He reportedly pushed back on it. A similar phrase had turned up in James Brown's 1975 re-recording of "Sex Machine."

The hook lifts a synth line from "Automan," a 1984 track by Newcleus. The track sits in A minor at 124 beats per minute over a plain F, G and A minor loop. The chords never resolve into anything cheerful. Austin sings over them in a gospel style that gives the track a wistful edge. A 2020 ranking of the greatest UK number ones placed it at 69 and noted its melancholy.

The single topped the charts in 11 countries, including Germany for ten weeks. In Britain it spent six weeks at number one, from August 2 to September 13, 1992, and finished as the second-biggest-selling single of the year. It was the first dance single to reach number one in France. In the United States it peaked at number five on the Hot 100 in early 1993 and stayed on the chart for 39 weeks. It reached number one on the dance club chart. It also won the Echo Award for best-selling single of the year.

Certifications followed in many countries. The single went double platinum in the United Kingdom, platinum in Germany and gold in the United States. At the 1993 WMC International Dance Music Awards it won single of the year and best house 12-inch single. VH1 placed it at number 36 on its 2000 list of the 100 greatest dance songs, and MTV Dance ranked it fourth among the biggest 90s dance anthems in 2011.

Director Howard Greenhalgh shot the video at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. Austin and Turbo B perform in the rocket garden among animated sequences. It was the last video to feature both of them before they left the group.

Other acts kept coming back to it. Lian Ross covered it in 1992 and Max Deejay in 1997, and Italian performer Leone di Lernia made a parody. Bastille mashed it up with Corona's "The Rhythm of the Night" on its 2013 track "Of the Night." Jeremih and YG interpolated it in "Don't Tell 'Em" in 2014. A German magazine called it the mother of all Eurodance songs.

DJs and players who want to work with it can find the key and BPM for the song on its page. The record needs little: a borrowed hook, a short chord loop, a steady kick drum and a voice that means every word.

It began as filler, and one of its own performers disliked it. Clubs still play it more than three decades on.