THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

241-Humanoid-Stakker Humanoid.

1988-Number 17 single.

Best Bit-At 1.14. Back in 1988 radio disc jockeys were still allowed to choose some of the music for their radio shows. It was BBC Radio 1 DJ Bruno Brookes who by making this song his record of the week, introduced ‘Acid House’ music to the UK top 40 singles chart.

Acid House music is a sub-genre of ‘House Music’ which was developed around the mid 1980’s by DJ’s from Chicago. The sounds are primarily produced on the ‘Roland TB-303’ electronic bass synthesizer-sequencer, an innovation attributed to the Chicago music producers ‘DJ Pierre,’ (Nathaniel Pierre Jones) and ‘Sleezy D,’ (Derrick Harris) who died in 2019. Acid House music became popular in the UK in 1988, but because of it being associated with the drug ‘Ecstasy’ many of the radio stations refused to play the songs associated with the genre.

‘Stakker Humanoid’ was written by Brian Dougans who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1968, along with his musical collaborator Garry Cobain, he was the first artist to have his music downloaded from the internet, on June 22nd, 1994, an achievement acknowledged by the ‘Guinness World Records.’ As ‘Humanoid’ Dougans released a further five singles all in 1989, which all failed to chart. A compilation Album called ‘Global’ was released in 1989, and a further three compilations, and remix Albums of his work from around that time were made available in the noughties. Dougans and Cobain also enjoyed great success together as the ‘Electronic’ music act ‘The Future Sound of London,’ who have been described as ‘boundary-pushing.’ ‘FSOL’ have issued 27 Albums between 1991-2019, there are also another 17 releases using the names ‘Humanoid,’ ‘Metal Cube,’ and ‘Amorphous Androgynous,’ between 1988-2018. The pair have also released music, including several EP’s, under a variety of other stage names. As ‘FSOL’ they also achieved seven UK top 40 singles, with ‘We Have Explosive’ from 1997 charting the highest at Number 12.

As well as receiving promotion from Radio 1, the song was also a favourite of the music producer Pete Waterman (see also best songs 627) who promoted the track on his new television dance music programme ‘The Hitman and Her.’ Surprisingly since ‘Acid House’ music was under a ban from many media outlets, Brian Dougans was invited to perform the song on the BBC ‘Top of the Pops’ music programme. Dougans has said,’It was a bit of a crazy day out, the producers insisted that if there were any vocals on a track, somebody had to sing them. I was like, ‘It’s a f…..g computer, man’,” (referring to Humanoid’s spoken refrain, which was sampled from the arcade game Berzerk) but somebody had to be singing the words, hence why I had a little microphone. If you actually look closely, you see me mouthing the words. They made me do it. The b……s!”