Review Summary: While it is certainly a kitschy meme taken too far with awful vocals, the house music it's set to is occasionally fun.
For some background: “Whistle Stop” by Roger Miller was written for and famously performed in Disney’s 1973 animated film, Robin Hood. In 1998, art student Deidre LaCarte created an eight-second clip of “Whistle Stop” sped up with hamsters dancing in the background to see how much traffic she could generate for a webpage. This resulted in the page becoming one of the internet’s earliest memes. Due to the page’s popularity, remix artists the Boomtang Boys decided to turn the clip into a three-minute house song, which only made the meme even more popular. By 2000, an entire album dedicated to this theme, Hampster Dance - The Album was released to the public.
Clearly this album is riddled with flaws, starting with the name, album title, and the five songs with “Hampster” in their title - all of which spell “hamster” incorrectly. Even if this was intentional, it seems like an arbitrary choice since it doesn’t make the album feel cuter or more accessible, just sloppier. Speaking of sloppy: the chipmunk country house theme is reduced to just a chipmunk house theme halfway through, showing that the Boomtang Boys gave up on giving the album a consistent southern flavor. Most of Hampton’s pitched-up vocals should please fans of Alvin and The Chipmunks’ music, and absolutely no one else. When the vocals are at their worst, they’ll either carry a country twang or be extra high pitched and squeaky. On “Everybody Feel the Groove,” Hampton raps like he’s 2Pac, and it’s as stupid as you could imagine. Even if you try to take the album seriously at times, the two Christmas songs, the abysmal slaughtering of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Dance to the Music,” and the rendition of the chicken dance (yes, they went there,) all make it impossible. Needless to say: neither the covers nor the vocals are their strong point.
However, there are surprisingly some good things about this album. "Hampsters Get the Blues,” is the best thing here, and sounds like a fun house song with brisk 808 percussion, bright piano, and whirling synths. The pitched-up vocals are mild enough here where they actually feel crucial to the overall sound. If they were to remove the references to “hampsters” and gerbils, I could see no reason why it wouldn’t be a 2000s house classic. the Boomtang Boys are clearly competent at their job and are deliberately poisoning their catchy beats with a kitschy meme. Even the music to “The HampsterDance Song” isn’t too far off from “Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!” by The Vengaboys. And if “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” isn’t at least somewhat listenable, then Kesha’s part in “Timber” by Pitbull must be absolute torture.
Wait, isn’t music by Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Vengaboys, and Pitbull critically panned as awful by most people despite having hits? Would changing the “hampster” vocals and references really fix these songs? Not for most of them, but the Boomtang Boys are really trying hard to make a gourmet dinner out of terrible ingredients, and that might at least be worth respecting. Nobody wanted a chipmunk country house album, but it could have been way worse. This isn’t nearly as annoying as Crazy Frog, although it probably did pave the way for him.
Album highlights: “The HampsterDance Song”, “Spin the Wheel”, “Hampsters Get the Blues”
