Flashback Friday (May 17th) - Fatboy Slim 'Praise You'

It's a B101.7 Flashback Friday! Listen today at 5pm for today's spotlight artist!

Let's go back to 1999 when British DJ known as Fatboy Slim had a hit with the song 'Praise You.' This song comes with the unconventional video featuring a flash mob dance crew outside a busy movie theater. This was flash mob dancing way before it was popular. Even though this crew isn’t part of a real dance crew, rather they formed just for this video. As for the crowd around them, it’s all real unsuspecting people. It’s hysterical to watch these average everyday people dancing and the half-entertained, half-annoyed reactions of those passing by. A concept well ahead of its time, yet so basic and low budget as it cost only $800 to make. It is clearly one of the most memorable from that time.

The crazy thing about it, the story goes that a director sent Fatboy Slim a dancing video after he didn’t get to work on the single release ‘Rockafeller Skank.’ Fatboy Slim loved it and decided to use the dance concept for ‘Praise You.’ Bring in the fictional Torrance Community Dance Group lead by this director, Spike Jonze who plays the part as the dance leader Richard Koufey. In 1999 ‘Praise You’ collected three MTV Video Music Awards, including ‘Breakthrough Video.’

What really makes this video so very 90s, notice the people watching the dance, none of them are recording it with their phone!