Because we can’t get Peggy Goe’s “Nanana” out of our heads.

Once upon a time, all Eurodance was here. Everyone remembers the 90s the way they like: for some, the golden age of alternative rock or Britpop, for others, just the “years” of 883. Many will instead remember the glory of Eurodance, the music that perhaps, in accordance with the most recent Treaty of Maastricht, united the dance floors of Europe and turned them into a global mirage.

Despite widespread Euroscepticism, the legacy of European dance music is very much alive. The phenomenon is global: the golden phase of EDM is over, as with any moment of “fatigue” in cultural phenomena, the gaze is turned to the distant past. And from there, the (benevolent) ghosts resurfaced in the form of direct hit remixes and revivals. From Beyoncé’s giant productions to the “new nostalgia” for rising stars like PinkPantheress to the TikTok success of comedian Kyle Gordon’s Vengaboys-style parody song Planet of the Bass, dance is again among us in many incarnations. Thus, the spaces left by superstar DJs are filled, new micro-genres and major commercial products are pushing rave, jungle and trance jackets, and the world championship in nostalgia and intolerance of modernity has new competitors.

Moreover, such a comeback is not surprising: a lot of dance music released in the 90s, and Eurodance in particular, was impossible to escape because it was fast, danceable, repetitive and filled with instrumental hooks; that is, it was the forerunner of pop music, which we still recognize as such. And Korean DJ Peggy Gou knew this very well when, drawing inspiration and ideas from the decade when she was still a baby, she composed one of the few truly “danceable” hits of the summer of 2023: (It Goes Like) Nanana.

A few numbers about the song: In Italy, it was certified platinum by FIMI in less than three months, which is better than many songs at the summer festivals – on the other hand, Peggy Gou will perform at Spring Attitude in Rome on Saturday, September 23rd. Of the 181 million streams the song has accumulated on Spotify, more than 19 million come from here: in short, an undoubted but not entirely predictable success, given that a year ago similar songs were absent from the Italian charts. What opened up the new space?

The effect of nostalgia contributed: the memory (or memory borrowed from parents) of the golden era of dance is as compelling as any narrative of a time better than the present. Peggy Gow, who trained in London and especially Berlin, benefited from this, as evidenced by elements of her hit. First the jumping bass, like Robin S.’s Show Me Love, comes on stage, but it includes the chords of I Like To Move It, an American track that was a huge success in Europe before becoming “the song from the movie Madagascar”: for many The first trap is already here. Then a keyboard motif and staccato piano chords warn the most attentive: this really is Ibiza. One of the inspirations stated by the DJ was actually the Balearic House, so in tune with the summer season.
Then there’s the undeniable hook, which comes from another influence Gow cites.

We are talking about ATB, that is, about the German DJ Andre Tannerberger, who in 1998 released the insidious trance track 9 PM (Till I Come), which had moderate success in recording in the last century and came back into fashion with the auto-remix. two years ago (two platinum albums in Italy). What made this song dangerous was the synthetic guitar melody, separated by a “bend” that gave it an organic but alien feel, almost a curious alien wheeze: Peggy Goe does not sample (that is, does not extract from the original recording) this chorus, but imitates the timbre and “bends” , physically produced on the keyboard using a wheel (“pitch wheel”). Thus, by hinting but not quoting, the DJ creates something even stronger than memory: an impression of him, a plausible photomontage, a doubt that he has already walked this path. If you retain the memory of 9 o’clock in the evening, you will be tormented by the suspicion that you heard Nanana somewhere.

And so, distracted while you rummage through your memories, you will continue to listen. (It Goes Like) Nanana is a nesting doll of sound traps: where memory does not interfere, the eternal laws of the catchphrase come. For example, a chorus with words that can be understood anywhere on the planet always works better: what language is more universal than the singing of syllables that we learn in infancy? The immortal words “na na na” are carved into the choruses of countless dance-pop hits, from Gala’s “Freed From Desire” to Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”, not to mention hundreds of examples in other genres that they have. Sha-la-la and company have been abused for decades.

However, there is one song that used it with the same chutzpah as Peggy Go: “Around the World” (La la la la la) by ATC (or A Touch of Class), another alphabet theme song for yet another inspiration . perhaps unannounced, but obvious. The track, released with considerable success also in Italy in 2000 (originally a cover of a Russian song), shares the chorus babble with the current Nanana. Not only that, but the joyful writing also peaks at a semantic climax that works like a self-fulfilling prophecy: if the music itself isn’t enough to spread far and wide, try saying so directly. “Everyone sing la-la-la-la,” the police department ordered. And Peggy Gou is no exception, in fact, she builds an entire verse around it: “I feel like I can’t erase and I can’t give up ’cause it’s something in my head that goes na-na-na.” Mission accomplished: na-na-na implanted in the brain.

Returning to the aforementioned cornerstone of Peter Szendy’s theory of catchphrases (“Tormentoni!”, trans. Laura Odello), “catchphrases (…) speak about themselves, their economy and their banality (…) they speak for themselves, how they work and why they work in the market.” And to go from ear to ear, with or without the help of TikTok, there are no simpler instructions than those already contained in the title: “Do you know that song that goes na-na-na?”