Pop Muzik (3:17)

“Pop Muzik” is a 1979 hit song performed by the British band M, fronted by Robin Scott.

Robin Scott describes the genesis of “Pop Muzik” this way:
I was looking to make a fusion of various styles which somehow would summarize the last 25 years of pop music. It was a deliberate point I was trying to make. Whereas rock and roll had created a generation gap, disco was bringing people together on an enormous scale. That’s why I really wanted to make a simple, bland statement, which was, ‘All we’re talking about basically (is) pop music.

The single was released in the UK first, peaking at number 2 on May 12, 1979, unable to break Art Garfunkel’s 6 week stint at number 1 with “Bright Eyes”. In August of that same year, it was released in America, where it eventually climbed all the way to number one on November 3.

Along with Scott, other musicians who played on the track were his brother Julian Scott (on bass), then unknown keyboardist Wally Badarou, Canadian synthesizer programmer John Lewis (who died of AIDS in 1985) and Brigit Novik, the backing vocalist.

The single was bolstered by a promotional video that was well received in its day; the clip featured Scott as a DJ singing into a microphone from behind an exaggerated turntable setup, at times flanked by two women who sang and danced in a robotic manner. One of the sight gags in the video depicted a rather plain-looking woman actually recording the backup vocals, which are then mimed by the female models, something that seems to foreshadow a number of incidents that occurred much later in the music industry with groups such as Milli Vanilli, C&C Music Factory, and Black Box.