Songoftheday 6/22/22 -Well the party was nice the party was pumpin', and everybody havin' a ball...
"Who Let The Dogs Out" - Baha Men
from the albums Who Let The Dogs Out and Rugrats In Paris: The Movie (Original Soundtrack) (both 2000)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #40 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1
Today's song comes from the Bahamian group Baha Men, who came together in the largest island in the country, New Providence, in the 1970's, originally named High Voltage. Evolving from a disco outfit to a Caribbean-styled band, and renaming themselves the Baha Men, they were signed the Big Beat label at the start of the 1990's. Their first album there in 1992 was named for the style of music they specialized in, junkanoo, which was the local version of tropical music tied to the black population of the islands in the festivals of the same name between Christmas and New Years Day. That was followed two years later with Kalik, where the Baha Men covered the 70's pop hit "Dancing In The Moonlight", which went to #18 on the New Zealand singles chart and just missed the top-40 in Canada at #42. However, after three more albums (now on Mercury Records) went unnoticed, the Baha Men were let go.
Their champion at Mercury, Steve Greenberg, however didn't give up on them, and signed the group to his label S-Curve. Steve also co-produced their first album there Who Let The Dogs Out. The title track was released as a single, which was a remake twice over of a song written and released by Trinidadian singer Anslem Douglas as "Doggie", though he was later sued for cribbing a radio jingle to make it. Here's the original...
Another cover was done by producer Jonathan King (who himself has a sordid history), who tipped Greenberg to record it with the Baha Men. Retitled "Who Let The Dogs Out", after really the only memorable part of the song (I honestly didn't even remember the verses until making this post), it caught on "virally" (as much as computer social media in the 2000s could be), and the song started getting some decent mainstream airplay all over the world, including America, where the song wasn't released widely as a single, forcing fans to buy the album. That's an awful big risk for an obvious novelty track, but it worked, causing Who Let The Dogs Out to sell millions. The song itself is migraine-inducing, a disjointed meld of steel drum music with the Miami Bass sound crashing in for the chorus. The lyrics in the verses supposedly hint at calling out the men who objectify the ladies uninvitedly, but by the end of the song that completely dilutes to them all dirty dancing together, so you got me...
"Who Let The Dogs Out" got enough airplay to spend a single week in the top-40 on Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 in October of 2000. The song made it to #18 on the Mainstream Top-40 radio chart, and #22 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format list. Internationally, the single topped the charts in Australia and New Zealand, and reached the top ten in the United Kingdom (#2), Ireland (#2), Sweden (#3), Norway (#3), the Netherlands (#4), Germany (#6), Switzerland (#6), Denmark (#6), and Belgium (#7F/#27W), and peaked at #14 in Canada. The Who Let The Dogs Out album, released in July of that year, went all the way to #5 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over three million copies, an insane amount for a one-hit novelty. Later that year, the song was placed on the animated kids movie Rugrats In Paris, and the soundtrack, released that November as the song had finished peaking on the pop chart, still went to #48 on the Billboard 200, selling over a half-million records. At the Grammy Awards in 2001, "Who Let The Dogs Out" criminally won the trophy for Best Dance Recording.
Trying to capitalize on the success of "Dogs", the Baha Men revived a song from one of their older albums re-recorded for Who Let The Dogs Out, "You All Dat". With indie-pop singer Imani Coppola helping out, the Eurodance track scored a second top ten hit in Australia (#8), and hit the top-40 in Britain (#14), New Zealand (#21), and Ireland (#26), but stalled all the way down at #94 on the American Hot 100, spending four weeks there.
The Baha Men's next album, Move It Like This, did manage to sell enough in America (probably from residual fans) to spend 12 weeks on the Billboard 200 with a high of #57 in 2002. However none of its tracks made any headway in the U.S., though title track "Move It Like This" placed in the top-40 in New Zealand (#11), Canada (#13), and the United Kingdom (#16).
Since then, the group released one more album on S-Curve, Holla, in 2004. They've also recorded a string of singles both for movie soundtracks and for stand-alone releases. The Baha Men's most recent studio album, Ride With Me, was released in 2015. This year, the group self-released a new single, "Fire" with Dominican producer Maffio.
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and lastly, performing for a hurricane relief concert in 2020...
Up tomorrow: Country singer addresses a young lass.
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