Song · Musical Youth
“Pass the Dutchie” by Musical Youth
“Pass the Dutchie” by Musical Youth appears on 12 radio countdowns from 8 stations between 1982 and 2024. Its best result is #36 on the John Peel's Festive Fifty of 1982. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #107 alternative song of 1982 and #3,039 alternative song of all time.
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"Pass the Dutchie" was Musical Youth's first release on a major label, a September 1982 single off their debut album The Youth of Today, and the British reggae band made it count: produced by Kingston's Toney Owens, it went all the way to number one in the UK.
It's a sly bit of patchwork. A shouted intro borrowed from U Roy's "Rule the Nation", words tweaked, leads into a splice of U Brown's "Gimme the Music" and the Mighty Diamonds' "Pass the Kouchie", a tune about sharing a cannabis pipe. Here the title got scrubbed clean with a patois word for a Dutch oven, the cooking pot, and the sanitized smoke went global: number one in at least eight more countries, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland among them, top ten in the US and Iceland, and more than five million sold.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | 36 | John Peel (BBC Radio 1) | John Peel's Festive Fifty of 1982 | 50 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | 82 | 91X | 91X Top 191 Songs of the 1980s (1989) | 191 |
| 1992 | 456 | KROQ | KROQ Flashback 500 (Memorial Day 1992) | 500 |
| 1994 | 395 | Live 105 | Live 105 Revolutionary 500 (July 1994) | 500 |
| 1998 | 360 | KROQ | KROQ Flashback 500 (Memorial Day 1998) | 488 |
| 1999 | 75 | 91X | 91X Fat 500 Songs of All-Time (July 1999) | 500 |
| 1999 | 402 | Q101 | Q101 Top 1,011 Songs of All-Time (December 1999) | 1017 |
| 1999 | 864 | CFNY 102.1 The Edge | CFNY Top 1002 Songs of All-Time (November 1999) | 1002 |
| 2004 | 175 | Q101 | Q101 Top 300 Party Songs of All-Time (July 2004) | 300 |
| 2021 | 469 | 90.9 The Bridge | 90.9 The Bridge Top 909 Songs of the '80s | 909 |
| 2023 | 732 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 850 Songs of the 1980s | 850 |
| 2024 | 640 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 850 Cover Songs | 850 |
Also listed as: Pass The Dutchie.
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