“6 Underground” by Sneaker Pimps

"6 Underground" drifted out of Becoming X, the 1996 debut by English trip-hop outfit Sneaker Pimps, and it's the sound of a band that figured out how to make a dance floor feel like a haunted house. Kelli Dayton, the singer at the time (she would later go by Kelli Ali), breathes the melody like a secret she already regrets telling, while Liam Howe's keyboards and Chris Corner's guitar curl through the fog and David Westlake and Joe Wilson keep a slow, heavy pulse underneath. Jim Abbiss produced it with Line of Flight, and the composer credits even find room for John Barry.

Its first run in Britain stalled at number 15. Then the song turned up in the 1997 film The Saint, radio started spinning it harder, and a re-release that May carried it to number nine at home; in the States it reached number seven on the Modern Rock chart and 45 on the Hot 100. Remixes pushed it deep into the clubs, and the Nellee Hooper version won out, tucked onto the album as a hidden track and used in Toby Tremlett's video. Even the sleeve has a story: it's a photograph of a Lego Space moonscape from the old Command Centre playset.

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