“Din Daa Daa” by George Kranz

"Din Daa Daa", also issued as "Trommeltanz", German for drum dance, is the record that carried the German musician George Kranz out into the wider world. He wrote it and put it out as a single in 1983, and it's built on almost nothing: Kranz chanting the title's nonsense syllables and answering them on the drums, call and echo, before synthesizers slide in behind. The clubs ate it up, sending it to number one on the US dance chart for two weeks, and it charted in several European countries too, the only international hit he ever had.

It has had a long afterlife. It is regarded as a dance classic and an early glimmer of human beatboxing, and it has been sampled, covered or remixed by everyone from M|A|R|R|S and Flo Rida to the Roots.

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