The completely forgotten track that soundtracked the summer of 1993: “I know what I want and I want it now”
On the very first day of 1993, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. Instead, the Czech Republic and Slovakia separated into two nations, and the former country was all but forgotten – it was a trend that’d reappear time and time again across the year, no more obvious than when a hit song soundtracked the summer that no one, it seems, can remember.
As the summer rolled in, the world, as it does, continued to turn: in June, Jurassic Park was released in cinemas in the United States, and the first mobile phone call was made in Greece, in July, a hurricane ravaged Mexico, a monsoon killed over 3000 people in South Asia, and a wildfire killed 13, in August, the first Power Rangers premiered in the US.
A few months prior, on April 16th, German group Culture Beat released ‘Mr Vain’ as the lead single from their second album, Serenity, and as expected, it experienced success in Germany first, topping the German Singles Chart for nine consecutive weeks from June to August – by the end of the year, it’d spent 33 weeks within the German Top 100.
Soon, the catchy eurodance tune hit several other official charts, bagging the top spot in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It went on to sell 442,000 copies in the UK.
Despite the shimmery house sound, soaring female vocals, and a male rapper performing the verse, which all but prognosticated the short-lived triumph of Eurodance, the track was beloved across the pond, too. It hit number one in Australia and on the Canadian RPM Dance Chart for ten weeks. In the US, it hit 17 on the Billboard Hot 100, bagging a gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America.
On the track, singer Tania Evans struggles against her desire for the selfish, arrogant seducer whose mischievous methods for taking her home have been used time and time again across countless romantic conquests. Evans doesn’t mince her words as she tells us, “He’d say ‘I know what I want and I want it now, I want you cause I’m Mr Vain’.”
The track was absolutely everywhere, and then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t, perhaps the song was cursed, as soon as the producer, Torsten Fenslau, passed away only seven months after its release – on November 6th that fateful year, Fenslau was driving near Messel, Germany, when he skidded off the road and was forcefully ejected from his car.
He made it to the hospital, but soon perished from internal injuries. That very same day, Culture Beat’s second single, ‘Got to Get It’, entered the UK Singles Chart, but without their producer, the group soon fell out of the public limelight and never found the level of success evidenced with ‘Mr Vain’ again.
Though the song itself was forgotten, it birthed a useful blueprint for Eurodance to flourish; in this way, at least, its legacy and impact can’t quite be measured. ‘Mr Vain’ was everywhere in the summer of 1993 and, in many ways, its influences could be felt across the rest of the decade, too, whether we remember or not.
