Star 69/Weapon of Choice  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Redirected from Star 69)
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

"Star 69" / "Weapon of Choice" are songs by Fatboy Slim. They were released together as a double A-side single, peaking at #10 on the UK Singles Chart.

The music video for "Weapon of Choice", featuring Christopher Walken, won multiple awards at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards and earned a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Video.

"Star 69"

"Star 69" is a house track with the repeating verse "They know what is what, but they don't know what is what, they just strut, what the fuck?" over and over again. A radio edit exists with the word fuck taken out. This track is popular with DJs and has often been remixed and used in mashups due to the vocal hook. The sample is taken from "I Get Deep" by Roland Clark, which is also used in Fatboy's own "Song for Shelter".

"Weapon of Choice"

"Weapon of Choice" features a prominent sample of Sly & the Family Stone's 1968 recording "Into My Own Thing" as well as The Chambers Brothers song "All Strung Out Over You." Parliament/Funkadelic and Bootsy's Rubber Band bassist Bootsy Collins provided the lead vocals; it also contains background vocal samples that were also used in "Don't Forget Your Teeth," the B-side to "Right Here Right Now" from the album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. The remix of the song featured on Fatboy Slim's greatest hits album The Greatest Hits - Why Try Harder peaked at #137 on the UK Singles Chart.


Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel Dune and the 1984 David Lynch adaptation are the likely inspirations for the lyrics "Walk without rhythm, it won't attract the worm." In the novel, Paul Atreides notes "We must walk without rhythm" to avoid notice by a giant sandworm as he and his mother cross the desert of the planet Arrakis; Lynch's Dune features Paul's line "If we walk without rhythm, we won't attract the worm" 82 minutes into the film.

Music video

The song is perhaps best known for its accompanying music video, directed by Spike Jonze and featuring actor Christopher Walken, who was trained as a dancer in musical theatre prior to his acting career, dancing and flying around in an empty hotel (the Los Angeles Marriott) to the music. The video has been credited by the music press and mass media for bringing a whole new generation of fans to Walken's talents.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Star 69/Weapon of Choice" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools