U Got 2 Let the Music by Cappella
Cappella's biggest hit reworked a 1992 Bortolotti track around an Alphaville riff and was the first single fronted by Kelly Overett and Rodney Bishop.
U Got 2 Let the Music is a 1993 Eurodance single by Cappella, the Italian studio project run by producer Gianfranco Bortolotti. It came out in Germany on September 20, 1993. It reached number two on the UK Singles Chart and number one in Austria, Finland and Switzerland. It is the group's biggest hit.
Cappella had no fixed lineup. Bortolotti started it in 1987 as an outlet for the DJs and producers working at his label, Media Records, in Brescia. The first club record the label put out was a Cappella track called Bauhaus. For several years the name sat on a string of releases built in the studio. Bortolotti would later say the label grew to 16 studios in Italy and two in London.
In 1993 Bortolotti told Music & Media that Cappella was moving away from techno toward pop. He wanted performers to front it. He chose two of them for the stage and the videos: Kelly Overett, a British dancer, and Rodney Bishop, an American rapper. U Got 2 Let the Music was the first single released with the two of them as the public image of Cappella.
The track was a reworking of older material. In 1992 Bortolotti had released Let the Music under the name Legend, another of his projects. Diego Leoni, a former Cappella member, also worked on Legend. In a later interview Bortolotti said the idea had first appeared on a small label run by a DJ from Brescia. That label folded about six months later. Bortolotti bought it along with its catalog. He found the track while looking for a follow-up to U Got 2 Know. He admitted the first version had been put together too quickly. He said the work done in his studios made it one of the best-selling records he produced at Media Records.
The credits list seven writers: Bortolotti, Pierangelo Feroldi, Antonio Puntillo, Alessandro Neri, Marco Baroni, Stefano Zucchini and Roberto Arduini. Bortolotti produced it. The central synth line borrows from Sounds Like a Melody, the 1984 single by the German synth-pop group Alphaville. None of Alphaville's writers appeared in the credits on the album U Got 2 Know. Bortolotti later confirmed the Alphaville song was the inspiration for the riff. He said the rights were shared. A breakdown of the song's key and tempo is available.
UK music papers mostly praised it. In Melody Maker, the Stud Brothers wrote that the record had everything it needed to go straight to number one. Their colleague Peter Paphides called it a sped-up Kraftwerk song with Kelly rasping all over it. At Music Week, James Hamilton described it as breezy, synth-buzzed Italo techno-pop. Tim Jeffery called it a big, bold and brash Euro stomper.
In the UK the single peaked at number two in its second week, on October 24, 1993. It finished as the 37th best-selling single of the year there. It topped the Music Week dance chart and the UK indie chart. It was certified silver. In Germany the single reached number three. It held there for three weeks. It spent 25 weeks on the German chart. It was certified platinum for 500,000 copies shipped. It went to number one in Austria. It was certified gold there. It also topped the charts in Switzerland and Finland. In Finland it spent two weeks at number one starting in mid-November.
The song made the top ten in Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway. It reached number three in Israel, 12 in France and 14 in Sweden. On the Eurochart Hot 100 it debuted at 46 in October 1993. It climbed to number four by January 15, 1994. It appears on year-end lists for 1993 and 1994. In Austria it placed eighth for 1994.
The video was shot in London. MTV Europe gave it heavy rotation in January 1994. Australia got a release on January 10, 1994, through MDS Dance.
U Got 2 Let the Music was the fourth single from U Got 2 Know, the 1994 album that also carried the earlier hit of the same name. Overett later left the group. Media Records brought in new members to take the two fronting roles.
Remixed versions came out in 1998, 2004 and 2006. The 1998 edition appeared in Australia as U Got 2 Let the Music 98. In 2019 the German producer Tom Franke released U Got 2 Let the Music 2k19 on ZYX, credited to Franke featuring Cappella.