Have you ever wondered what it would be like to swoop into a room with so much swagger that people think you literally own the place? Now you don’t have to, because Eiffel 65 has tapped into the well of humanity’s potential for artistic expression and forged an aural chalice of “damn” from which you can sip pure, unadulterated “oh, ***.” Europop is quite literally the Holy Grail of high rolling, the Maltese Falcon of making a statement, the Arc of the Covenant of women letting you cum in it. This is the kind of record Indiana Jones would risk life and limb for. You can practically see him fighting his way through hordes of Nazis, heroically swinging across bottomless chasms, then returning home to throw on some goddamn kicks and hit the dance floor, bathing in blue neon lights while grooving to this fine piece of wax. Feel confident yet? I do. That’s because I’m sitting in my chair right now listening to this goddamn album.
Look no further than album opener “Too Much of Heaven” for Eiffel 65’s statement of intent. Here, the groove of Kraftwerk and the depth of Nas collide into an unholy union of songwriting sex appeal. It’s not every day you find a group willing to bring challenging lyricism to the dance floor. Usually people are too drunk or too stupid to listen to lyrics while dancing, but Eiffel 65 respects both the listeners intelligence and their funk at the same time. Lines like "let me tell you what it's all about / It's called money dependence today / As people just keep on going on / Looking at the dollar bill / And nothing else around them / No love, and no friendship, nothing else" showcase the group's willingness to challenge our own base desires like greed. Far too often bands tempt their own fans into sin with immoral temptations like t-shirts, posters, and album sales. But what really matters is friendship. Love. Eiffel 65 understands the diseases that plague the human condition, but they don't settle for mere understanding. They want you to feel it through slick beats and stimulating auto-tune. When these lines are rapped via an old school T-Pain vocal filter, you feel the crushing weight of our lust for material things while your hips shake off into orbit. Primal and philosophical in equal measure, I can't think of music I'd rather sharpen my swagger to. It's like holding a bottle of Johnnie Walker in one hand and the complete works of Albert Camus in the other, all set to music.
I’d be remiss not to mention Eiffel 65’s crowning achievement, “Blue (Da Ba Dee),” not just because this tune struts with the blazing torch of dance classics like Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” or Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” but also because, ingeniously, the track is sequenced together four separate times in a row with four separate mixes on the Spotify copy of the record. Have you ever heard a song that is so impossibly timeless, and a band so improbably cocksure of its talents, that they felt this was a good decision? *** no you haven’t, but life is too short to wonder about things you haven’t done. This is both the time and the album to do to. Case in point, the moment the somber piano melody drops out is remarkable in its audacity. Who would give up such a beautiful, plaintive sound? Eiffel 65 would, but they don’t replace it. The sorrowful tune is amplified tenfold by the emergence of a hip-grinding, thumping beat and what I can only assume is an autotuned eulogy for smurfs. I’ve never wanted to dance, wank, and cry all at the same time before, but Europop continually finds ways to surprise its listener. Before, I never knew I could feel comfortable in my masculinity while mourning the loss of fictional blue creatures through tears, but that's the power of Eiffel 65. Anything is possible when you discover your own confidence.
Before listening to this record, I was filled with doubt. Questions like "if my dog really loves me why does he always eat my toilet paper without telling me before I need to go?" and "will I ever be able to eat just one slice of pizza?" plagued me at every turn. Now I don't ask questions, because questions are for people who don't know how to dance with authority and people who can't think with clarity. Eiffel 65's Europop is the rare kind of record that parts the clouds of your life and, if you let it into your heart, can help you become the man you were always meant to be.
