“Situation” by Yazoo

"Situation" began in 1982 hidden on the flip side of "Only You", the Yazoo debut single that went to number two in Britain, but North America had other plans. As a single there it scraped only 73 on the Hot 100 and 31 in Canada, but the clubs adopted it: it became Yazoo's first song to top Billboard's dance club chart, holding on for four weeks, and crossed over to the Black Singles chart too.

The version most people know is François Kevorkian's American 12-inch remix, which made the US edition of Upstairs at Eric's and still gets most of the radio play in America. Moyet's laugh at the top has been borrowed by other records, "Macarena" among them. DJs including Peter Rauhofer and Richard "Humpty" Vission remixed it in 1990 and again in 1999, and the 1999 mixes sent it back to number one on the dance chart that October.

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