The Story of Pop: 2002 (Chapter 25)

It’s Thursday, and time once again for our weekly jaunt back to the charts of two decades ago with The Story of Pop: 2002. This week: we hit the halfway point of the series with a soft rock classic reimagined as a techno ravers’ anthem…

• Artist: Scooter
• Song: The Logical Song
• Released: 10/06/2002
• Writers / Producers: Roger Hodgson / Scooter
• Highest UK Chart Position: #2
• Weeks on Chart: 15

The tale of this week’s featured artist begins back in 1985, when H.P Baxxter and Rick J. Jordan met in Hanover in Germany, with their sights set on cornering Depeche Mode’s share of the market in sprightly synth pop with their curiously named band Celebrate The Nun.

Success was middling to not forthcoming for them under that name however, and it was eight years later in 1993 that they became a remix team known as The Loop, remixing tracks for the likes of Adeva, Holly Johnson and RuPaul.

It was also around this time that, featuring the contribution of various other DJs and producers, that Scooter came to being. Over the next nine years, these techno ravers were to go onto become one of the most successful acts in Germany, selling well over 30 million records and notching up over 80 gold and platinum awards.

But despite filling floors from Hamburg to Cologne with songs titled “How Much Is The Fish?”, “Move Your Ass” and “F*** The Millennium”, in some countries – the UK being one of them, save for a handful of modestly performing top 30 hits – they were a bit of an enigma.

That all changed with the release of their cover of a song originally a hit for Supertramp in 1979. Off the album Breakfast In America, “The Logical Song” had been their biggest hit on both sides of the Atlantic. But the gentle soft rocking of the original was to be radically replaced for Scooter’s version.

The song’s distinctive chorus of ‘When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful / A miracle / Oh it was beautiful, magical’ was pitchshifted to sound almost chipmunk-esque, whilst H.P Baxxter yelled a bonkers series of raps over thundering synths that referenced The KLF. It was quite simply unlike anything they had done or like any other dance record around at that point.

When released, the single smashed into the UK top 10 at #7 at the start of June, continuing to climb steadily over the weeks that followed (which was a rare sight itself in 2002) before eventually reaching a peak of #2, a position it occupied on and off for three weeks.

By the end of its chart run, it had gone onto sell over 400,000 copies. More success followed with top 20 hits for “Nessaja” and “Posse (I Need You On The Floor)” later that year, whilst their best of album Push The Beat For This Jam: The Singles bought them to both a new audience and firmly putting Scooter into the big leagues here on British shores.

Don’t forget to follow our brand new playlist on Spotify – updated weekly so you never miss a song from the story of pop in 2002. And you can leave your memories of the songs below in the comments, Tweet us or message us on Instagram, using the hashtag #StoryofPop2002.