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MANIAC 2000 WILL be available to stream for the first time ever, as the single celebrates its 25th anniversary.
The single remained in the number one spot on the charts for ten consecutive weeks beginning 4 March 2000. It is the fifth-highest single in Ireland of all time.
The song’s popularity overtook All Saints and Madonna, Backstreet Boys and blocked Westlife from getting their fifth consecutive number one.
Mark McCabe, the artist behind Maniac 2000, was a DJ at Pulse in 1999. At the community-led Dublin pirate radio station, he frequently received song requests. Once he started playing Maniac 2000, landlines were jammed. He was 20 at the time.
Speaking to The Journal.ie ten years ago on the 15th anniversary of the single, McCabe said when they recorded the song, there was a sense that the attitude was very much “let’s see what happens” – and what happened was a number one single.
He added that the success of a song was a “a crazy time” for McCabe, who remembers “doing signings in shops and being bundled into the back of a jeep to escape hordes of fans.”
The single was originally recorded at the Cricket Club in Clontarf. The song was a reworking of Soundcrowd Orchestra’s remix of 4 Rhythm’s Maniac, which itself heavily sampled the 1983 song Maniac from the movie Flashdance.
“It’s so badly produced and so badly recorded,” laughed McCabe in an interview 10 years ago. “It’s everything a record shouldn’t be; but it just goes to show that people like to forget where they are for seven minutes on a Friday night when they are out.”
McCabe, speaking for the 25th anniversary of the single, said “A song is a snapshot in time.”
“It was our anthem,” he added. “It represented what we were all thinking and how we were enjoying our life at that time.”
The latest release was rerecorded with McCabe and vocalist Mimi Lane, and will be available to stream on Spotify and Apple Music beginning 2 May 2025.
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The article speaks for the direct professional competence and experience of the author.
As a contrast, our newly appointed Taoiseach has frequently disputed the correlation between poverty and ill health and premature mortality. Despite the fact that Veradker is a qualified medical practitioner, his political ideology that poverty is not a concern of government, blinds him to the hugely detrimental impact of poverty on human health.
Diets in poorer area plays a bugger role in life expectancy….
@Paul: When we see that obesity if a factor in First World “poverty” we should wake up and see that PC fake analyse is keeping the poor, poor. Certain political parties need to keep a pool of poor people as voters to get themselves elected and these are the real enemies of the poor.
The private practice model of GP healthcare is not financially viable in poorer areas. Timely Access to GPs is more restricted in the case of poorer people than for those who are more comfortably off.
@Jenny mcCarty: You can qualify that statement, I assuming.
@Tony Daly: quiet the opposite. Workers have to arrange time off work to visit GP and pay 50 to 65€ as they don’t have medical cards.
@Geraoid O’Helidhe: Great, all workers should have them and the public housing close to jobs if required.
Well done for highlighting health inequalities. Not new but larger ignored in ireland.
See the Black Report – very old doc now
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/XXMM-JMQU-2A7Y-HX1E?journalCode=joha
Also this affects everyone to some degree as there is a social gradient.
It’s all about choices….
@Gavin Huban: To an extent it is but you have less choices to make or certain choices have a higher cost as a proportion of your income. To eat healthier might be very difficult to afford or even get depending on where you live.
Slightly off topic but one glaring indictment of our health service is that even for private patients, waiting times are only “a matter of month”.
In this country we have now a new norm of having to wait months even privately except where you are a Minister or politician.
@Ger Healy: I completely agree. There is something to be said for a competitive American model of medicine where doctors decide to help people, make money because of their qualifications and expertise, and not be grossly overworked. When I have had to see a specialist, after waiting a very long time for the appointment, I wonder about the waiting list of people behind me and how that must affect the health of the doctor being put under so much pressure day in and day out.
@Ger Healy: The narrative that people are definitely corrupt if they are politicians is wrong and threatens democracy and is similar to the widely held belief that all media are liars.
Put it this way…………………….have you ever seen a bookie riding a bicycle?Go figure!
@Jenny mcCarty: Have you ever asked yourself why you need these gross simplifications, Jenny? I pay a mortgage and work, but I acknowledge this as good fortune, as well as the work ethic and attitude I was lucky enough to inherit – in the long run I’m far better off in all respects. Stop whining – you may need to see the world in such simple terms because you are frightened by its complex problems and just want it to go away. For you and all of us it will, eventually, and this will have been your life – is this the best you can do?
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