“Groove Is In The Heart” by Deee

"Groove Is in the Heart" was Deee-Lite's calling card: the American dance band's debut single, out on Elektra in July 1990 and the first taste of their debut album, World Clique. They wrote and produced it themselves, and had been playing it live since 1989, before the album version was cut in 1990.

It's a crate-digger's collage that plays like one big party. The main riff comes from Herbie Hancock's "Bring Down the Birds" off the Blowup soundtrack, Vernon Burch's "Get Up" supplies the drum track and the bones of the slide-whistle breakdown, Bootsy Collins of Parliament-Funkadelic sings as a guest, and Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest drops the rap. It topped the charts in Australia and on the US and Canadian dance charts, came with Hiroyuki Nakano's psychedelic '60s-themed video, and is now filed as a dance classic.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.