This writer came to the March Fadness for 2023 too late to write about a song in the actual bracket, but when I looked at the songs that had not been chosen by 64 writers before me, there was something like a gadzooks! moment. No one wanted to write about the 1981 "song" that made its way to the Top 10 on the USA Top 40 charts, and perhaps inadvertently forced an entire generation to listen to some of the greatest music ever composed (before, say, The Beatles). We're here to discuss "Hooked on Classics" by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
THE GENRE MASHUP THAT DID NOT LAUNCH A THOUSAND CAREERS
Popular music of the 20th century is littered with entire popular genres that were mashups of pre-existing genres. Ragtime came from a collision of New Orleans and marching bands. Country music evolved from gospel, bluegrass, and Southern blues. Rock and roll came from almost every genre played on the radio in 1954, except the popular Tinpan Alley songs. And the century ended with the thud of NuMetal and its clashing blend of hard rock and rap. A handful of artists in the late 1970s and early 1980s attempted to do the same for disco and classical music, but "classical disco" is at best a failed experiment, or a glimpse into what-might-been in pop music.
BLAME IT ON STANLEY KUBRICK?
Film scores have been influenced by classical music since the beginning, and songs from movies have likewise been making their way to the charts since talkies arrived in the late 1920s. Director Stanley Kubrick might be credited as an influence in what we're about to discuss. Although not a musician himself, his films (almost) always used pre-existing classical works powerfully, but the relevant songs here are Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathrustra," as used in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Wendy Carlos' heavily Beethoven-infused score for A Clockwork Orange. In an era when instrumentals could still sneak onto the top charts (Marvin Hamlisch scored a #3 hit in 1972 with the old rag, "The Entertainer"), these classical pieces were re-interpreted for the whacked out, psychedelic crowd. It's at this point that the emergence of synthesizers have to be acknowledged. Although not derived from a classical work, the 1972 song, "Popcorn" by Hot Butter, should be referenced, with a catchy beat that predates disco. Which leads us to...
LIKE MOST THINGS IN THE LATE 1970S, STAR WARS WAS INVOLVED
This is not the place to discuss how disco came to dominate pop music in the mid 1970s, but it did. Disco was yet another musical chimera, combining the hypnotic pounding beats electronic instruments allowed with R&B melodies and vocals (or the place to discuss The Bee Gees). Walter Murphy may (or may not) have been the first to combine disco and classical music, but he scored the first major pop hit doing so in 1976 with "A Fifth of Beethoven," by laying down a groovy disco beat under parts of Ludwig Van Beethoven's "Symphony No. 5," arguably the Mona Lisa of classical music—it's the one piece known by people who don't know classical music. The other 1970s composer who brought classical-sounding music to the masses was John Williams, especially with the several pieces behind his Star Wars score. One of the early fans, who reportedly saw Star Wars four times on opening day, was a musician who called himself Meco. In a crazy backroom deal, Meco somehow secured the rights to record a disco version of "Star Wars" (with a beat and laser "pew pew pew" FX) called "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band," that made it to #1 on the U.S. pop charts, and was followed by disco-ized singles that included Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Wizard of Oz, and The Empire Strikes Back.
THE LAST GREAT BREATH OF A FAD, AND A GENRE TO BOOT
By 1981, disco as the dominant pop music genre was quickly on its way out, almost as suddenly as it had arrived about 6 or 7 years earlier (but certainly not for a lack of quantity). K-Tel Records and English arranger and keyboardist Louis Clark collaborated with the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra on an album called Hooked on Classics. The nine tracks were each musical pastiches of several orchestral pieces over disco electronic beats. What can be confusing about "Hooked on Classics" is that the single that charted and the songs on the album are two different things. "Hooked on Classics" (the pop song) was an A-side that comprised half the songs (the first and the last) on the album track called, "Hooked on Classics (Parts 1 & 2)," and the B-side had the others (the middle...half). So, there were two different ways to hear this song, spread across three tracks. This essay, however, is JUST about the single, so the B-side and Part 2 (of the album track), we won't be discussing.
FLIGHT OF THAT YELLOW TRANSFORMER WHO DOESN'T TALK
"Hooked on Classics fits 17 famous classical tunes in the 5:06 minutes of "Hooked on Classics (Parts 1 & 2)," which averages out to 18 seconds, but the first piece, Tchaikovsky's "Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Opus 23“ only gets 8 seconds until it swirls into Rimsky-Korsakov and "Flight of the Bumblebee." At this point, I should probably mention that I am by trade a columnist about the movie business, and I am not trained or educated in classical music (or for that matter, disco). My approach as we review the songs in "Hooked on Classics," therefore, will be as a layperson, and I will mostly reference what I know these songs from. With that out of the way, the Tchaikovsky piece is often played at the Olympics for Russian athletes, especially at events that prevent the Russian anthem from playing, and "Flight of the Bumblebee," well, that was The Green Hornet theme song. I am old.
LIKE THE SIMPSONS, FANTASIA (ALSO BUT NOT ALREADY) DID IT
"Flight of the Bumblebee" arguably hogs a bit more of the running time than it should, but it also seamlessly blends right into the most famous notes of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550." As for where you've heard it, I'm going to cheat and say, it might have been Amadeus, which won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, but, due to the way the Academy defines a score, not…Best Score. Mozart leads (not as seamlessly) to just a few sweeping bars of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," but it's enough to be recognizable. You have definitely heard "Rhapsody in Blue" a hundred times, including TV commercials, but we'll give credit to Fantasia 2000, although that movie actually came out 18 years after Hooked on Classics (so not something contemporary audiences would've known about...obviously).
IT TAKES GUTS TO CUT OUT BEETHOVEN AND BACH IN SOMETHING CALLED "HOOKED ON CLASSICS"
Just as we hear the final notes of "Rhapsody in Blue," we get to a part that screams, "well, that was a choice." One of the most famous tunes in "Hooked on Classics" leads to a relatively obscure piece, "Karelia Suite," by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (who probably should've been represented by something like "Finlandia"). The jump to something new to most people undercuts the really brave choice, which was to skip over five of the most famous songs on the album version, which include Beethoven's Fifth, some Bach, more Beethoven and Mozart, and, oh yeah, also Rossini's "William Tell Overture" (AKA the "Lone Ranger Theme").
EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT CLASSICAL MUSIC, I LEARNED FROM BUGS BUNNY
For the next famous piece, I so thought I was going to be crediting Bugs Bunny, in particular the short, "The Rabbit of Seville," which famously features Bugs singing "Figaro, figaro, figaro" while (not) shaving Elmer Fudd's head. The thing is, though...that was actually not from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, part of which is featured in the middle of "Hooked on Classics" (as far as a pop culture tie, I'm going to fall back on Amadeus yet again). Mozart leads us back to Tchaikovsky, this time, his "Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture." Not counting the Shakespeare connection, I feel like that piece doesn't have the cachet the actual tune probably deserves. You might have heard it on any number of cartoons (Ren & Stimpy, Tiny Toon Adventures, SpongeBob SquarePants), and it's also the love theme in some versions of the The Sims video games.
HAMLET, THE MESSIAH, AND GREG WRITES ABOUT GRIEG
"Hooked on Classics" almost always blended each piece together, and I'm going to use that word again, seamlessly. After Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture," the Philharmonic just slammed in some horns to proudly announce "Prince of Denmark's March" by Jeremiah Clarke, who drew the low card of having to be the most-not-famous in a 17 song parade of very-famous-composers. The horn blast itself is pretty recognizable, whether it be from Prince Charles and Princess Diana's wedding march, or you know, the ending of "Tubthumping" by Chumbawumba (this is a real thing that actually happened). That leads to just a few notes of Handel's "Messiah" (just enough not to make "Hooked on Classics" sound like Christmas music). Handel is jumped upon again by another hard transition, this time, the piano of Edvard Grieg's "Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16." For this one, I'm going to lean back on video games again, and say strategy gamers might know this piece from Civilization V, where it is one of the songs your civilization can create (and hardly mention at all how weird it is to have a famous composer one letter off from your first name).
WAIT, BUGS BUNNY DIDN'T DO CARMEN EITHER?, AND OUR BIG FINISH
We started off by noting how "Hooked on Classics" only gave 8 seconds to the first song, and it becomes really obvious why, when you get to the final 68 seconds of the track, which go to just two songs, although they are "doozies," so to speak. First up is "The Toreador Song" from Georges Bizet's opera, CARMEN, which I was shocked to discover was not one of the operas Bugs Bunny spoofed (but you'll still recognize it...from something - Wikipedia says, "rugby?"). "Hooked on Classics" clearly wanted to wound up listeners with a big rousing finish, and the track accomplishes that with Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture." You know this song if you're American and have ever attended 4th of July fireworks displays, which is a little ironic, because the "1812" is not a reference to the War of 1812, but is instead about a battle between Napoleon and the Russians. Go figure!
WHITHER CLASSICAL DISCO?
Although "Hooked on Classics" made it to the Top 10 on the pop charts, that success was basically the last hurrah on what could have been a new genre blending classical music with dance beats. Sure, Louis Clark and K-Tel would continue to release Hooked on Classics albums (and compilations), but the mini-fad was short-lived (basically six or seven years). There's even the case to be made that there was something of a legal backlash. Ten years after Hooked on Classics, the Belgian techno dance artist Apotheosis released a catchy single and ten inch called "O Fortuna" that sampled from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. The Carl Orff estate sued Apotheosis, and actually won to have distribution halted, but by that point, Apotheosis had the last laugh, because the song had already had its run through dance clubs, and any raver who wanted to dance to "the witchy song from The Doors" already could do so. Classical Disco mashups continue to exist on YouTube in the 21st century...but the days of Top 10 successes may be long over now.
Greg Dean Schmitz has been writing about all things pop culture, from music to comic books to TV and movies since the pre-WWW days of the Internet in the early 1990s. Greg founded one of the first popular movie websites, Upcomingmovies.com, in 1997, which became part of Yahoo! Movies in 2002, and since 2008, Greg has written the Weekly Ketchup for Rotten Tomatoes." @GDSchmitz