THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

496-Mr. Oizo-Flat Beat.

1999-Number 1 single.

Best Bit-At 0.51. It’s Daft Punk for the primary school kids.

Mr. Oizo is the stage name of Quentin Dupieux who was born on April 14th, 1974, in Paris, France, he derived his stage name from the French ‘oiseau,’ meaning bird.As well as writing, producing, and remixing music, Dupieux also works in the film, and the video making industry, to date he is the director of 10 movies released between 2001-2020, he also has many writing, composing, and editorial credits to his name. Dupieux has released six studio Albums between 1999-2016, and three soundtrack Albums, for films he has directed.

‘Flat Beat’ was added to Mr. Oizo’s debut studio Album ‘Analog Worms Attack’ as a bonus track when released in October 1999. Dupieux said it only took him two hours to compose the song, with the heavily repeated bassline being sampled from the ‘Fatback Band’s’ 1975 track ‘Put Your Love In My Tender Care.’ (see also best songs 798) The song went to Number 1 in seven European countries, making him a ‘One Hit Wonder,’ as this remains his only charting song to date, apart from in his home country of France where his song ‘Pharmacist’ reached Number 8, in 2020. Surprisingly ‘Flat Beat’ only reached Number 5 in France, as it didn’t receive a great deal of air play on it’s initial release.

Undoubtedly the songs great success can be put down to it being commissioned by ‘Levi Jeans’ for one of their commercials, which featured the yellow puppet character ‘Flat Eric,’ who was created by Quentn Dupieux. ‘Flat Eric’ was based on a dog-like puppet, but with hands, and originally called ‘Stephane,’ but ‘Levi Jeans’ insisted on renaming the character to ‘Eric’ as that was more of a ‘international name.’ The original idea for the commercial was to have ‘Eric’ being involved in a car accident, and having his head flattened, but that idea was dropped, but the name ‘Flat Eric’ stuck.

‘Levi’ are no strangers to commissioning music for their advertising, having made 40 commercials between 1985-2007, with some other of the songs used, also featuring in this countdown.

‘Oh yeah, I know Quinnan, he’s a real, a real jerk.’