One Song - Robin S.'s "Show Me Love"

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

This week on One Song, we’re talking house music and the enduring influence of Robin S.’s “Show Me Love.” In their discussion, Diallo and LUXXURY trace the song's evolution from its R&B pop origins to the transformative remix by DJ StoneBridge that propelled the song to the top of the charts. Plus, LUXXURY recreates the iconic bass line that gets everyone out on the dance floor.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luxury, today's song is an iconic house anthem that to this day still gets everyone to the dance floor. In fact, when it dropped in 1993, it was part of a wave of dance music that took the mainstream by storm, topping the charts across Europe. That's right, Diallo. And since then, the song's iconic baseline, and this very specific synth sound that it uses has been interpolated and reused by everyone from Daddy Yankee to DJ Mustard to Charlie XX, X, X. And even Beyonce, though actually, technically Beyonce didn't even interpolate it, even though she gave up half the publishing on her song,

we will be getting into that on this episode later. We will. Today, you're going to find out how this song went from an unknown flop to an erred defining hit, a real chum. I bet most of us have never even heard the original version of this song. We're talking about one song, and that song is Show Me Love by Robin S. I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo-Riddle.

And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers. And this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before. And if you want to watch one song, you can watch this full episode on YouTube and Spotify. While you're there, please like and subscribe.

So luxury, where were you in 1993 when Show Me Love was off the chain? Man, I did not know you were going to call that. When it was all that in a bag of chips. It was definitely all that in a bag of chips in Paris in spring, 1993. when I was hanging out with the older brother of a recent guest of ours, Nick Kroll. Jeremy and Allison and I went to the clubs of Paris, our junior year abroad,

and we heard this song every single night, a million times, and never got tired of it because it was like the song of the moment. What about you, Diallo? What memories of spring 1993 do you have? I think I was still in high school and still going home and watching a lot of MTV, and this song was all over MTV. And I think it was the first time I realized, like,

how big house music was becoming. You know, and like, like, I feel like there were... Did you know about house music separately? Like, vaguely, like, I feel like there was that Jungle Brothers song. How House Hugh was big. I feel like... I feel like Heavy D had made sort of a transition into, like, sort of like, hip house. There's a big hip-hop.

We should talk about that. There's a whole hip-hop house overlap that's happening. Hip-hop. And honestly, like, most of what I was hearing, I wasn't, like, necessarily a huge fan of, but I wasn't hearing, like, that real underground house music. that I would later discover and later love. And to be clear, like, in the early 90s, house music is blowing up on the mainstream charts

with songs like Crystal Waters, Gypsy Woman, Black Box, everybody, everybody. One of my favorites, Technotrona, pump up the jam. That was one of the first. And let's not forget, good old Madonna, Vogue was 1990. Like, she was one of the first to cross over to have a pop hit using the sounds and rhythms

and machines from the Chicago underground. For those of you who are unfamiliar, with house music. For today's song, we're going to focus on when house went mainstream. This is not our deep dive into Chicago House. I'm wearing my Chicago jacket right now. House music had been around since the early 80s, and it was already popular in cities like Chicago at the warehouse, Frankie Knuckles. It was popular in the black and Latino and LGBT communities. We're not doing that. This is not the Marshall Jefferson episode. Yeah, we're going to focus on when when House went mainstream.

Why do you think it's the early 90s that House becomes like this major mainstream cultural force? I mean, in America, we really have to give some credit, at least, to Madonna, because in 1990, when she puts Vogue out, she's the biggest star on planet Earth. Yeah. And she has, first of all,

this is a larger topic for another day. What she's really done is appropriated with some kind of credibility from the community, queer and ballroom sounds and visuals in the video, and even literally the dance vogue, all of this is coming from these queer communities, but she's been there, they've kind of taken her in as one of her own, and she as a pop star

makes a huge global hit out of these sounds and out of these literally house beats in the mainstream in a way that had never been heard before on pop radio globally. So to me that's a big part of where this story starts to shift from being underground to being globally mainstream.

I'm going to agree with you because I think the first time I was aware of this being a culture into itself was her video for deeper and deeper. Which was clearly a house song, great video, and I think that was what I was like, oh, that's a whole thing. That's a whole thing that's going on here. And then a second factor,

which we'll be getting into today, is that there is suddenly kind of a revolution, kind of a punk rock revolution in production tools. The ability to get the sounds that maybe you heard on the dance floor and bring them into your music. Starts at a certain point, it crosses over from just other house music DJs

getting 909s in M1s. Again, the machines will be getting into more detail later. And these are sounds that people like Madonna go to clubs in here and come out of it, I want to make pop music out of. That's a great point. So it's interesting because here we are talking about house music and show me love. But the song that we all love, show me love, is not the original version of the song, Show Me Love.

That's right. A lot of people don't know that. And the original version is not, I think you're about to say, a house song by any means. No, no. And, you know, it's another wonderful example of a remix, basically. eclipsing the original so much that people forget that there was another version of the song. Which is the big dream of all remixers and record labels. It's like it didn't quite work the first time. Let's like inject it with new life. Usually the remix adds a little spice to a song.

But like in this case like it literally like they they remix the song that hadn't done much. Right. Look what happened. Exactly. And turned it into a global powerhouse that's still igniting dance floors 30 plus years later. It's almost like when someone remakes a movie that wasn't good. Yeah. And makes it great. Right. It's like the back. It's like the best. Battle Star Galactica reboot. You know what I mean? Like Al Star Galatica, okay, is a modest hit from the time.

A Star Wars rip-off by most accounts, but then when sci-fi remade it, it's so much better and so good. And I feel like this is the musical equivalent of that. Belstar Galactica, get into it. All right, so who wrote the original version of Show Me Love? So the original Show Me Love is written by Alan George and Fred McFarlane,

production duo and songwriting team, known as The Terrible Two. The Terrible Two? The Terrible Two. The Terrible Two. You gotta be damn good if you're creative name is the terrible too because people are going to be looking for it to be terrible. Or you might want to watch out if you have any business interactions as we will be talking about later with someone who forthrightly calls themselves terrible like that.

We're the terrible too. We're going to screw you over, big time. Unsung villain? I don't know. We'll see. And originally intended for it to be recorded by Sylvester. Oh, wow. The trailblazing queer icon who we will be doing an episode of very soon.

You Make Me Feel is one of my favorite songs. Can you imagine show me loving that falsetto in that high voice? It'd be completely transformed song, right? I'd bring some promises. Right. I can see it. You'll make me feel. Show me love.

You show me love. There you go. That's even better. I smell a hit. That's collaboration in action right there. Unfortunately, he passed before it was possible to do the song. So it was sitting in their library, and they come across this new singer who's born Robin Jackson Maynard,

but at the time was going by Robin Stone, hadn't quite yet shifted. to Robin S. Yeah. And she sings the original version, which, again, sounds nothing like what we are all used to hearing.

Right. The monster smash of dance floors globally. Didn't sound like that original. No, not at all. At first, Robin didn't feel like she was the right singer for this song. She was more used to top 40, not dance music.

But when she started relating the lyrics to her own life, she grew confidence that she could do this song, some real justice. Let's hear a clip of the original Show Me Love that was released on the UK label champion in 1990. Three, two, one, hit me. By the way, we just experienced it in the room.

That song is delightful. We just, it's kind of a delightful song. That song is so harmless and just plain old delightful. It's a little delightful ditty. You know what you're picking up on? One of the differences between this and the remix is that this song, it's in a major key. Like we're in B flat major.

Yeah. And one of the things we'll be getting into the change is that the remix or Stonebridge. our Unsung Hero, a little preview of that, did was to change the harmonization, to change the sound, the vibe from major to minor, which is chord choice changes. But that's probably why we're kind of bop in. Yeah, that's why it's like so sunny, breezy and delightful.

And it's like a bad script. There's no tension. There's no tension in this song. Except for, ironically, listening to it, I hear that drum fill. That drum fill, that very, like, you know, machine-driven drum fill, if you will, is probably the danciest part of this song.

It's what makes me think of like a Nina Cherry or a Jody Watley type of song. Those are fills straight out of Vogue, by the way. Like it's the same like da-da-da-da-da-da-da, like very long snare-snare fills. Which she got from the dance community. They're taking that stuff from the dance community. I'd also point out that this version does not have

the iconic big vocal open. No, in fact, the opposite. We have this long intro. We were just in the room kind of waiting for the vocal to come in. The vocal is the star of the show on this song. And in the remix, we hear it a lot sooner. And to your point, we hear this.

Left off the track. Instead, we get the saxophone. We get this, like, way too long saxophone. Again, 1990, you're basically hearing the 80s, because nobody knows what the 90s is yet. By 93, we're full on in the 90s. So we would be remiss if we didn't mention the debate about who did the original vocals.

There's another singer named Andrea Martin, a very successful songwriter. She wrote, You're the One by SWV, before you walk out of my life by Monica. Huge. It's better in time. Leona Lewis. She was also a singer and a vocalist. And

she claims to have done the vocals on this song, at least the vocal demo. So just really briefly, if you don't know, the phenomenon of demo singing is really interesting. It's kind of a thing that not everybody outside of the music making world would know how it works. Demo singers are frequently bought in, especially for

collaborators like The Terrible to, who may, have singing capabilities themselves in order to create a production of a demo that another singer will sing to a guide vocal. But what happens in this scenario is that the demo singers are hired at a flat fee for hire, work for hire. They don't get any portion of publishing or royalties. They're just hired for a few hundred bucks to come in and sing some lyrics that may or not have been completed even sometimes by a producer, a songwriter, some combination of both. In this case, Alan George, Fred McFarland, apparently had lyrics but nothing more. And part of why this story is important is because Andrea's claim, which we have no reason to doubt,

because it is such a normal part of the demo singing phenomenon is she's there with a headphones on and a piece of paper with words on it. Deciding what to sing, how to sing it, what syllables and syncopation and cadence and whether to go up and octave, down, a growly, like all of the subtleties of what singing is comes from her decision-making process. And the problem we have, even to this day, with all things music making is when does that cross over into songwriting? Yeah, it's a songwriting. Publishing credit. Yeah. It is such a gray zone, obviously.

It is a gray zone. You know, I think when I was writing music for Sherman Showcase, I usually sang the demo, even if it was male or female, because I was trying to go for a specific thing. Sometimes they have the words and they have the music. But we don't know what the individual notes of the words are going to be. Sounds like she came in and did a lot of, I guess you'd have to call it. call it vocal arranging. I think also in your situation, what you're describing is more kind of ethically sound, for lack of a better word, like you have composed the song to the point of you have decided what the melody is. How do you take your lyrics and melodize them and maybe place

them in time? And there's always going to be a little gray zone, creative people like a good demo singer or a good bass player. They're going to try some stuff. Any session musician is going to add their flare. Of course. And knowing that their role is to be a session musician for hire, they won't expect more than that. But there's always, there can be a line that gets crossed where among a group of people that are listening to the result and fair-minded might say, that is a substantial change. I think we should cut you into the publishing. And last but not least, if it were in Nashville, there's something very specific about Nashville,

which is called Nashville Rules. Okay. Long story short, Nashville Rules is this idea that anyone who's in the studio when the song got made, including famously the joke is the weed dealer, the pizza delivery guy, would all get cut in some way, maybe not equally, into the publishing, because the song would not have happened that way had they not been there. That's super interesting. Now, that lives in parallel with Nashville also being one of the capitals of the planet

for incredible session musicians who are union and scale. So these dynamics work in parallel with each other. Good for Nashville. I believe that there's video of Andrea Martin speaking on this subject of whether she's on the song or not. On an ASCAP panel in 2011, she talks about being brought in to sing the demo for what would become Show Me Love. wake up one day. Right. The $300, this was the check. Wow. And my

sister called me and she goes, you're on the radio. I'm like, no, I can't be on the radio. I'm turning and you know, you know your tags. My tag was, oh, yeah. I mean, listen, this is one of those things it's hard to know. I mean, like, she's a successful songwriter in her own right. So to a certain extent you're like, why would she lie about this?

Right. You know? And it does sound like from that clip she's claiming to be on the actual record, not just the demo. I think it's ambiguous and it's open to interpretation. My take, and of course it's unknowable, unfortunately, Andrea Martin passed away a few years ago. We can't ask her directly. She's, her colleagues and friends have since kind of tried to interpret it. And they don't think that she was literally saying, she's saying it. But I do think what she is saying, and I do think what most people would agree, is that if she's, she has the demo singer, threw in her tags, through in her specific cadences and ways of presenting the melody, which I think is what she's saying. I think what she's saying is she is a

co-writer of the song, which we've been re-sung by Robin S. That's my takeaway. But we should also mention the other side, which is that Robin says that she never heard a vocal demo before she went in and recorded hers, and that she claimed she improvised that opening herself. Now, it is possible because we know how things work in the studio, that Robin was given the same note from the producer that, you know, Andrea was given and they both landed on. He might have even said, hey, you know,

I don't know if you listen to the demo, but that singer hit this note, can you hit that note? Very possible. I guess nobody living who we can ask claims that it was Andrea on the track, but, you know, it's one of those things. I think my opinion is that we can't really know.

Yeah. And then we almost have to go by, you know, like I said, those people who are living, who were in the studio that day, you know, because again, it sounds like Robin has her version and Andrea might have had a slightly different version, but Andrea is not here to sort of clarify. I agree. We can't know. One thing I will say, and actually I just flashed on the fact that in our Beyonce episode, we have Bresia Webb hitting that note pretty close. If you go back and listen to that,

I think what is happening is Andrea came up with the idea of how to do it. And, man, vocal grain, that is a complex phenomenon. How do you make a voice? sound a certain way. Nobody thinks the terrible two came in with that note. But a good singer and a Brisha Webb and an emulator so you can mimic a lot of the attributes pretty closely. And

it doesn't change the fact that it was somebody else's idea maybe to do it. I think the separation is I think Andrea's idea was executed by Robin S's voice. That's my takeaway. Probably so. It would be so unethical just to release the track with somebody else's vocal on it and not

taught to that person. I mean like we know this happened in musical history, but usually it's a pretty big scandal. Regardless of who did what on the vocals, we got to point out that in the end, this song was released in 1990, and it came out, and it went absolutely nowhere. I mean, I can't say that's

surprise. It sounds a little dull to my ears, but yeah, this song does no business. Luxury, tell us how this song ended up getting remixed years later. That's what's important to realize. It gets released in 1990. It's released, and becomes a hit three years later. That almost never happens.

nowadays, you know, without the help with TikTok. So tell us how that happened. Okay, so in 1992, there's a record label called Champion Records, as you mentioned, the A&R is Paul Okinfeld. Oki, one of the great DJs. Famous DJ. Famous DJ, who's got the ears, and he's

also in the clubs, and he's like picking up on who the up-and-comers are. And he finds a guy called, a Swedish guy called Stonebridge born Sten-Hullstrom, and brought him in to remix a song called See the Day by Anne Consuelo. I like that note. Bamb-Bum-B-B-D-A.

Bum, bum, bum, bum. He's not day. He's not during. I'm not nailing it. Your nail is something. I will say this. Like, I feel like those, those minor notes are like, they're like the chocolate on your Sunday. The blue notes are the chocolate on every, everyone's Sunday in every genre.

It invoked something in you. Like, you were playing that. We were both like, like, we're getting stabbed in the gut. We always have these moments where there's like three or four episodes in a row. This is the blue note moment we're having. Man, those blue notes are so special and they're so subtle. Go back to Don Penn, no, no, no for a little deeper examination of what a blue note is. But that's what you're hearing, and it just cuts to the core every time.

I feel like the Swedes always make good house music. Like, Swedish House Mafia, by the way. Right. They continuously just keep making good news. But I love that. I love that because even already in that song, you can sort of hear that tension that is completely absent from the original. Yeah. It's almost like the music is more drivey.

You know, thanks to the drums and the machine drums. It's cleaner, yeah, there's a cleaner sound. Yeah, but there's also like that tension that you, that you sort of need to, you know, get it in your body. Yeah. I think you just like minor chords, frankly. I think, I mean, I do too. People.

I think dance music generally, to me, is far more effective when it's sort of dark and melancholy because it's minor. Because it's getting something, it's putting something in you that you got to get out through movement. Yeah, yeah. As I understand it, champion told Stonebridge, hey, here are a bunch of songs that we've released. so the last couple years, do you want to do anything?

Look at our library. Is there anything you think you can work your magic on? That's kind of fun. I think that's exactly what happened. Yeah, I love stories like that. It's an exciting opportunity for like a fresh new producer to come in and like, it's like a sandbox. You can play around with it and there's no, no consequences in the same way. It's like when I'm producing a TV show and a record label comes and they say, hey, all these songs will give you extremely favorable license deals. Just feel free to use any of them.

But at that point, you're like, oh my, you're like a kid in the candy store with a shopping spree or something. or like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, they open up their catalogs to Stonebridge. Yeah. I think that's great. It's a great creative opportunity for an up and cupping producer with, like, low stakes. And we're going to get into the headspace. Or I'm going to try to get into the headspace of what it must have been like for Stonebridge in 192 to sit down with an a bunch of gear and figure out what to do next. Oh, that's so cool. Well, listen, we're going to take a quick break. But when we get back, we're going to hear how Stonebridge transformed Show Me Love into the iconic hit we know in love today. Stay tuned. All right, luxury. Let's try and get into the Heist. space of Stonebridge as we recreate these stems. Where do you want to start?

So I just wanted to briefly talk about the headspace of a remixer. I've done many remixes in my life. I've done, there's something like a hundred official ones that I put out there. And it generally starts with your given the acapella and maybe the other stems from the original song. And then you sit down with your machines, if you're a, you know, house music or something electronic. And you just start trying things. You start matching, say, the acapella with different beats and different sounds. There's many ways to do it. You can also just loop little fragments. What Stonebridge clearly did because he took the entirety of the original Acapella was started experimenting with what can I put underneath this? What might work? For

example, what drum and bass sounds. So we're going to get into the nitty gritty. Today's episode, we will be doing stems a little differently because I will be recreating the stems. And in some cases, getting really close and in some cases getting right on the money. And in some cases, get yeah, yeah, it'd be plus a minus. You could be the judge out there of the strings, for example. But this is what Stonebridge, who's talked extensively about this, I found the original machines and the original sounds that he actually used. So we'll be building that from scratch today. I love it. Let's get into it.

Okay, I mentioned there's a couple of things that you start with. Two of the big categories are reharmonization and sound selection. So broadly speaking, I mentioned when we listened to the original version of the song, that it's a major. One of the choices he made was he took some of the same chords, but he rearranged them, which really just takes the form of sounding minor. because the major chord was the first one, and when he rearranged them,

it wasn't the first one anymore. Before he did the final version that we all know and love, there's an earlier version, lost to time. There's no sort of demo out there for us to listen to, but he mentions he used a different bass sound. Okay. But he had already come up with the bass line. So it's interesting, I can recreate for you,

what it might have sounded like. Let's hear it. He used preset 16 on the M1, the Korg M1 synth, instead of preset 17, which we'll be talking about in a moment. So I'll just lay down a basic house beat here. So the earliest version of the remix sounded something like that. At least the bass line did.

Yeah, that bass is not as iconic. It's not as exciting, right? We were playing around before the show. I had the real bass patch set up and just one note that instantly evokes like 1993. We came up with like three or four songs. Yes, right? Hadn't found it yet.

So he turned in an early version of the remit. Mel Medali, the label head at Champion, apparently called and said, it's okay, but he had kept too much of the original version of the song. He wanted him to take it even further. So he takes another crack at it. And now let's walk

through what some of the things he did. Some of the things that actually made the cut. Things that made the cut. So let's talk about what's going on with the drums. I'm so interested what the drum machine is doing. So the TR, the Rollin TR-909, a sister to the TR-808, which came out just a couple years prior to it.

And similarly, is the sound of an entire genre. We have the 808 to thank for the sound of hip-hop. The evocation of hip-hop nis in even a country song. If you put an 808 in there, you're going to be bringing in that vibe. So too with the 909, we have evocation writ large of dance music, of house music, of even techno music. And techno. I was going to say techno uses a lot of 909. Because so many of the producers in the earliest days were,

able to afford these machines, use them in their productions, play them on the dance floor, other producers heard them, bought the same machines. In dance culture, there's the mixing from one song to the next, it's easier and creates kind of a flow, kind of a even a sort of a state, a hypnotic state to have this sort of basis of similarity with fluctuation and change on top with the music and the vocals. So rolling 909 drum machines to this day are really the sound of house music, of dance music. And specifically, I'll play for you a handful of just the sounds of the drum kit. Now, mind you, I'm going to play a kick in a hi-hat and a clap.

There's a lot of variations. You can tune them separately. But basically, in house music, you'll frequently hear this kick. A lot of times with this open hat, and maybe a clap that sounds something like this. Put them all together at 120 BPM. You're like 51% of the way to like, to a half. house music track, right? I mean, that's half of the work because of the sound, because of the

four on the floor, fictrum, and because of the specific sounds that come from this Roland TR909 machine. To me, some of the monotony of four on the floor is what kept me sort of away from dance music for a long time because I was like, oh, those drums aren't interesting. Oh, interesting. And I do feel like there's no variation, like there would be funk or hip hop or a lot of those. Yeah, there's so much interesting stuff going on the drums. I think it scares a lot of people off, quite frankly. But I do think that what is good is, when it has those elements, because you sort of need those elements

to make it drivey, but they're sort of hidden. It's sort of like, hey, don't watch what my other hand is doing right now, because it's like, that is part of the task of dance producers is to hide that for on the floor. That's a really great point.

And as we get into the drums, I think one thing that Stonebridge does exactly to what you're saying is there's a lot of variety in what he brings in. There's secondary layers of beats. There's sort of a breakbeat in there, which I wasn't able to isolate. But he kind of comes and goes. he adds fills, he drops out the kick.

And of course, most iconically, is he does this motif, which is the four crashes, one, two, three, four. Across the song, he's varying it up, it's a four on the floor, 909 basic house beat at 120 BPM. But all of those things,

being weaved in and out gives it the variety that I think our ears may have needed at the time. So let's hear a little bit of what Stonebridge is doing with the drums on the song. All right. So there's a couple of basic beats and I wasn't able to isolate the sub components, the percussive elements of the beat, but I'll play one into the next one

and you'll hear the variety. Here is the intro beat with no kick drum. And again, just what I was just doing, it's with some percussion on top of that, but the kick hasn't dropped yet. But here we go. If that was 51% of house music with the kick drum, it was 42% with just a high hat of the clap right there.

And then he drops the kick. And you can hear these other. percussive elements, but da, but da, but gotcha. Don't, we call them,

like in production, those are called tops, because they're just high-end percussive things on top of this really core meat

potatoes 909. So those add some variety. And then at the end of it, we get to the first motif, which is like a hook. And it's this.

Yeah. Right? Every time that happens in the song, you're like, and that's a hook happening in the drums, right?

Absolutely. Like on Sonic Youth. Every now and then, there's like something in the drums that like, it feels melodic almost, even though there's no melody going on.

It feels like something that you walk away with remembering. Well, I think on an even more fundamental level, because so much drops out for that four-time symbol snap, your brain is like, oh, snap, something changed. What's about to happen? Then they come in and they hit you with it. The cleverness of his drum programming is really, is I hadn't really noticed it until I was breaking it down.

He makes sure that across this track, which by the way, I should point out, there's only five or six layers total besides the vocals. It's the drums, the bass, and a handful of synths. So with a lot of simplicity, the variety comes from one, two-bar loop to the next. It changes subtly. It drops out. A kick comes in, goes.

You know, that four-bar crash riff is in there. And that's one way he takes us away from the potential monotony that you're right, can come in house music, which is four on the floor all the time. We come to one of my favorite elements of this song, probably the defining element other than the human voice on it. This is sort of like the part of the song's character that comes expressly from the machine of it all. The bass, the M1 organ. Tell us about that. Listen, we have a couple of unsung heroes on the episodes, Stonebridge being one of them. Stonebridge is to me the unsung hero.

Sure. Because without Stonebridge, which is not like a famous name, you know, outside of like, you know, real music nerd circles. Without him, we wouldn't know the song Show Me Love. We might not even know Robin S. 100%. Stonebridge, absolutely an unsung hero. So why are we talking about it right now? Listen, we're generous people.

On one song, we often have multiple lens on here. This one's going to have a few. Another one I would argue would be this machine, the Corg M1 synthesizer, which came out in 1988. It's one of the best, if not the best selling synth of all time. About 250,000 units were made before its stop production in 1995. It was $2,000, which seems like a lot at the time. And it was. But for its capabilities and based on, we're coming out of an era where it's synths are 10 times.

as much. So this is a relatively inexpensive synthesizer, which also has on-barred effects like delay and reverb. It also has sampling and a sequencer so you can use it like a full production tool, make a completed song. All the dance music producers buy this device, among other genres. But the M1 is just like a ubiquitous tool for making music. And it has a few iconic presets in it. Like literally Madonna's Vogue uses the piano sound. And an entire genre kind of springs up from this like syncopated piano sound style. Again, the M1, we have to thank for it. But let's get into what we're here to talk about today.

There's a single preset. It's called organ two. And it sounds like this. One note. That's all you need. Can you name the song in one note? You can kind of do that with this. Okay, name the song in one note.

Maybe you need a second one. But by the way, we were talking. And if you do this, you hear Rihanna's work. So this is a patch that we feel like has been used many, many times across drums. So as I said earlier, I think that like all great music, especially dance music, has a certain tension that's going on there. Yeah. So we've got the organ that we love. Can we hear it layered with the drums so we can hear some of that drive?

All right. So that baseline, we heard it before with the preset number 16, bass number 16. Stonebridge tells the story how he was going back to the drawing board as he was asked to do. And he's like, I'll pick another bass sound. And he goes to the very next one, preset 17 plays the same baseline again. But suddenly, it sounds like this. And boy, does that sound different. That sounds really good.

By the way, in my ears, and maybe this is just them lying to me again. Never. I always hear of boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom. So there's actually two varieties of the baseline. They're subtle and they're different. But across the song, there's one single baseline with tiny, tiny varieties. Okay.

Here's variety A. See if you can tell the difference. And here's Variety B. That's the one I hear. Very slightly different. Very subtle. Yeah, you can hear the difference. I'll put it against the drums and let's hear what would be happening in the room in 1992

as Stonebridge is piecing this together. And by the way, I'm like, let's piece together what he's building. It's like, he's kind of done, right? That is pretty much the song at this point. The rest of the elements are little things that come and go for the most part. But yeah, we just heard probably 80% of the musical content is that happening. Wow. Now, I say that, but one thing that's missing in a big way is that nasty bass that starts the song.

You're talking about that growl. That growl, that growl, that growl-the-bass. We've got to talk about the growly bass. Let's talk about the growl. Another hook in the song. Now, this is one of the ones that in my recreation, I got real close, but it's not 100%, but I was able to track down from Stonebridge's interviews, the exact synth he used. And I got the right patch he doesn't mention, but I think I got pretty close. But the story behind it is that he says that he was a big fan of Todd Terry, which, We do like that. We are also big fans of producer Todd Terry. And he mentions that there was a song he heard, again, doesn't mention by name, but it starts with a big, nasty kind of synth sound. And what song do we think that was? We think it might be this one.

This is if you want to ride from 1991. So it would have been fresh in the clubs around the same era. I like the texture difference there because that part comes in like, like it comes in hard. And then it goes into this smooth sort of haunting. I'm seeing the color blue, but sort of like a haunting beautiful sound. And so you get that sort of like back and forth between like the grit into like the beauty. Absolutely. And it's an instant like what is that in a way that maybe the original version for us,

we were kind of like waiting a minute and a half for it to get going. It's like the difference between an actor with no levels to play and like an actor who finds the levels in the role. Exactly. So let's listen to the synth. This is a Yamaha DX100, which by the way, the same synth that Steely and Cleevy used in the same year on the Don Pan song. No, no, no, no. Very cool.

Now, I probably could add, I think 10% more growl, more grit. What's interesting is that, like, that is clearly trying to approximate, like, a guitar sound, but it sounds very, like, if you were expecting a guitar, that would sound like so cheesy. But when you think of it as, like, electronic music, suddenly it sounds, it sounds right. It sounds appropriately gritty. I think you're right. I think it's well said. That element comes back as a complete riff, the dun, dun, dun, dun, done, done, done, done.

A couple of times in the song, but also just the first hit comes every bar to punctuate it several times throughout the song, and I'll give you an example of that. So we have this going, and then every bar, we get a one, and then we get another one. And then every fourth bar, it does that and gives us a little extra. These really subtle things that he's added across the track, which is, again, so sparse and mostly the bass line is always consistent. The drums have these little variations. And then some of these other synths come and go. So there's just a couple of other finishing touches.

There's three other synths that just have little moments that come and go. They're very short and sweet. There's a stab organ, another recreation that I feel like I'm 92% of the way there. Sounds like this. and I'll bring in the other elements and that gets harmonized with the bass so that's just another M1 preset the Stad of Oregon

there's another element which is strings very very subtle and I love how Stonebridge talks about his decision to add them again we're coming from this standpoint clearly his philosophy is this is a dance music track there is less is more as the philosophy here

so in order to differentiate between the verse vocal and the chorus he adds this. I'll give you some context. I love it. Stonebridge says the thought process behind the strings was quote, the brain thinks,

oh, that's the chorus when you hear the strings. Even though nothing in the actual rhythm is changing. A mistake a lot of people do is to make the chorus too big. But then it becomes pop. And he was wrong in saying

it's not pop because it's a pop hit. But the distinction between kind of pop and club music sometimes is the number of changes there are in the song versus it's kind of you're in a trance because you're kind of like flowing through this theme and variation. Right.

You're elongating ideas. Pop music is like, hurry up and get to the next idea and make me miss the previous one before you bring it back. So he did this really subtle thing of just adding the strings. So you're psychologically like, oh, this is a little bit of a moment that changed. And it's the chorus. And then it goes away. It's very subtle trick. I thought it was very clever.

So do you think we could hear just the strings and the organ just together? And maybe turn up the strings a little bit because they sound wonderful together. You got it. Want me to bring anything else in? What comes next, DJ? Bring back the M1. Like, I can listen to the eight minutes of this. You know what I mean?

And put, like, totally different vocals over it. It's perfectly atmospheric. It sounds like the 90s, but it also still just sounds dope. Yeah. You know, maybe it's a little bit of that late-era pet shop boys that I'm here. Yeah. You know, like, you know, because West End Girls has strings that are. sort of similar. That's a great connection and that's that's a kind of chord change that they would use to.

Totally. It's kind of melancholy and... Yeah, it's melancholy. That's what we're not getting on the original champion release, Show Me Love by Robin Stone. What's the word you use? Bippity Boppity? No, there was a word you used to describe it. Delightful. It's just... It's just delightful. It's just delightful. It's just delightful. It's just what you want. It's like, oh, they came by the house the other day. She's just delightful. You didn't like her, did you? She doesn't bring much of the party. No. Delightful. Last thing is the bleep bloop. The pop patch? Pop Patch bleep bloop. What is the pop patch bleep blue?

Well, the pop patch bleep loop or the blip-de-blop. These are all things I've made in my notes. This is the last and final melodic element that only comes a handful of times for a moment. Makes another big difference with a minimal amount of work. It was inspired by a Kevin Sonderson track. Another nod to American dance music. It's another not to the Chicago, Detroit music, that Stonebridge is clearly loving and listening to. And the Swedish were smartly listening to.

Absolutely. This is a Kevin Sonderson alias chaos. It's called Definition of Love for. from 1989. And sure enough, he found a very similar patch on the M1 and made this melody, which is remarkably similar to what we just heard, which in context, sounds like this. That's cool. And then we get one note growls coming back.

If, when, why, what, how much have you gone? No, this is perfect. This is the kind of 80s dance music that I think we were wrong. all loving. By the way, I think we just figured it out. Earlier I asked, like, why are the Swedes so good at this? Because they were listening to Todd Terry, Kevin Sonderson, and a bunch of really talented

black producers. From Chicago and Detroit. From Chicago, Detroit and New York. That's the secret sauce. That's the secret sauce. All right. All right. I'm very excited about what comes next. Because I think one of the reasons this song works as well as it does is because despite all

of these electronic instruments singing in perfect harmony, there is at the center of it, this fantastic diva house vocal. And unusually, as we mentioned before, the song begins with the vocal because it's the remix. So this is the vocal that everything else springs from. Absolutely. Let's hear a little bit of the isolated vocals from Show Me Love. And I want to start, I want to open with the opening because how can you even talk about this song without that opening?

Just warning, that's not really a warning. It's about to get loud. So get ready to dig into the loudness. So turn up louder, y'all. Turn it up even louder. If I could get a ringtone that was just that, I'd probably use it. You know what I mean? Like, that's going to get your attention.

Yeah. What an outstanding way to open a song. What a note. What a note. What a note. You don't even realize how long that note is until you isolate it. It's a really long, loud, long note. Play it back.

Let's count it. Just eight full seconds of full built. She melismatted it at the end. Yeah, but that ain't going to. Trust me, I would have been out at it. It's one vocalization. It's one output motion with breath. It's one human breath.

It's one human breath. But it's a breath that conquered the world. Breath that conquered the world. Right. So brilliant to start the tune with that, too. In the first 20 seconds, we have the d'an. We have three things that are already iconic in these first 20-ish seconds. It's the don't.

The growl. And the pz, p, p's motif with the crashes and the drums. And then you get this. You are just pummeled into submission. And we haven't even got to a single, like, lyric or chorus yet. Doesn't her opening start with the introduction of the M1 organ? Yeah, you're right. They're happening at the same time.

So I would argue that... Oh, yeah, you're being bombarded with these two things at the same time. Yeah, exactly. We get hit with two classic moments at the same time. When I talk about violence on this show with regards to music and with regards to stuff hitting me, it's because my experience of music is like, I'm... I am powerless. Do you want to address the commenters who are like, that ain't violent?

Why does he say that's violent? No, guys, he means that as a compliment. When things overwhelm me with their beauty and their power, I feel bullied by the music. That's what's happening. I have no control. I am in a corner and I'm crying, but I love it. Give me more. Save it for your therapist.

I mean, after an opening like that, you could have gone off a cliff. You know what I mean? This could be one of those things. It's all downhill from here. It's all downhill for you. But it's not. We get it actually into some wonderful, wonderful, really cool lyrics. Heartbreaks and Promises.

Like, if you say it, it's hard not to say it in the rhythm of the song. Yeah. So let's get into that. Can we hear that first verse isolated? Heartbreaks and promises. I've had more than my share. I'm tired of getting nowhere. You can hear in the bleed of her headphones the old, the previous version too.

Yeah. I love these lyrics. Can we hear a little bit more of the first verse? What I need is somebody who really. Like that note, when she goes up, right? there. You're just like, oh, damn, is she going to, is she going to hit this? Like, oh, damn, she shows. She has my full undivided attention. Yeah. It's just crazy, like, just really listening now to this version and, and the original. And, like, it's the same vocal. It's crazy

that it's the same vocal. It's like, the original vocal covered up this amazing vocal. You know, the original version covers up the vocal so much that, like, you're just like, oh, this is a lovely day in the park. Taking all that stuff out and putting something compelling underneath it. Yeah. Completely different reaction. It's such a fascinating, lesson, though, and like how many things in the world, how often does this happen, like a great TV show or a movie where it's just like not the right marketing campaign or like they had, you know, it's 10 minutes too long in the beginning so people tuned out of the TV show. The number of examples in the world of great creative content that sort of buried.

Yeah. Underneath something that isn't doing it justice, which is what the original, because it's, it's again, global hit inside of flop, incredible. She was worried about doing the song justice and it turned out that she did more. already done it justice. Yeah. On the day she was supposed to sing, this is an interesting fact. Robin S. apparently had the flu. Michael Jordan style, she didn't want this to ruin her recording. Apparently, she didn't want to sing the song over and over. So she just rallied to put her all into it. And basically what she says is, we have this wonderful quote, the emotions that appear in the song.

It was actually me trying to sustain notes and me trying to stay alive and breathe at the same time. Staying alive through the singing. Wow, you can hear it too. I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's super incredible. No, I know. I know. Can you play for me the part, if you're looking for devotion, talk to me.

Can we hear that real quick? That's the best part right there. I want to hear the talk to me. I love talk to me. Talk to me. Because she kind of like, her vocal control, there's so many characters.

This is a good singer. Like the most obvious, like, stupid thing to say, she is so good because she's hitting notes, their breath control, but also her, the characters,

this sort of, she just shifted from one character to another in the course of that line. Talk to me. That's a different voice. That's a different person saying, talk to me. We've got to hear the chorus. But can you play me a little of the pre-course into the chorus? It's so crazy because you can hear, so going back to the major versus minorness of this, you hear in her headphones. She's listening to and reacting to and singing to this happy, up the delightful version. but she's giving us what we know to be contextually in this darker, you know, minor key version. I'm just so struck by the juxtaposition that she's like finding that emotion

and that cadence, given what she's actually reacting to, being the opposite emotion. It's really so interesting to me. I'm just processing that. Yeah, it's so good. There's an unused part of this song. I always get excited about this because that means that nobody's really heard this since the day it was recorded.

So what's the unused part of this? Yeah, towards the end of the track, it's not in the final version. I think some of these bits make it into various remixes. But this is her, you know, towards the end of not only her singing the song, but apparently her, like, exhaustion's about to kick in. She'll probably go lie down after this. Yeah.

She does some ad libs that are very joyful to hear. Show me. And she's like, guys, I got nothing left. That's actually, I mean, that would have been catchy as like a remix to the remix. Yeah, remix of the remix. I mean, that's so incredible how transform. formative. Her vocals mixed with Stonebridge production. That's a good

word. Completely transformed. Insane. Actually, it's funny. Stonebridge, like I said, is in my mind, definitely an unsung hero. He literally made the song into a hit. He says that he didn't even know that the song was a hit until he heard it on top of the pops.

Five months later, that's crazy to me that you can work on something. Then you just watch it, TOTP, and all of a sudden it pops up. Champion never informed him about what a hit it was. because he thought that they didn't want his remix fee to go up. Listen, we'll just pull the Band-Aid off here. We usually talk about songwriting splits.

This is a song, Show Me Love by Robin S, with the contributions of Robin S, the contributions of Stonebridge on this remix, which is a completely new bed of music. And possibly Andrea Martin deserves some sort of credit. None of them are in the publishing splits. It's 50-50. It's wild.

And Fred McFarlane, they're 50-50. They wrote that initial... So even Robin S is not getting a... Lyrical draft and music. and music bed that inspired the song, but nothing from that point on actually included the two of them. So even Robin S was worked for hire. Robin S was worked for hire. Andrew and Martin was work for hire. Stonebridge made a thousand pounds, Great British pounds. One flat fee, not a single point on the masters. Well, he made more than Andrea, so that's good for him. But that is insane that the people who probably contributed the least to the song that we love are splitting the money 50-50. Let's be clear. This story is, to me, very unfair to three. The three primary contributors. And sadly not uncommon.

When you read interviews with Robin, as you can tell, she's parsing her words carefully out of hope that maybe something will change. But in her own words, quote, I put my own input in the song, never got paid for it. People are dot, dot, dot, people. Some people are just not generous like that. And then a little bit later in the interviews more recently, she says, I never used to talk about it. I looked to these people as mentors. To be done like that, I didn't want to talk about it for a long time. I don't have any malice.

I'm just disappointed. And she says she praised George, who is the remaining member of the duo, Fred having passed away. She says she praised George will have a soft spot in his heart and give her a portion of the publishing. Don't you think it's fair?

Don't you think it's decent? She kind of asks. George, we know you listen to the show. Do write. Do write by Robin S. Seriously. All right. Well, we've talked a lot about

how Stonebridge and Robin S came up with this song that is just, its legacy is unchallenged in dance music. I mean, like, to this day, this song has been interpolated. by DJ Mustard for Kid Inc. The song Show Me.

Also, Danny Yankee used it in a song. Charlie XEX has used it in a song. I mean, like, this song is never going to go away. I feel like its legacy continues to this day. Absolutely. And listen, it's so interesting to kind of walk through all the specifics and really the nitty gritty of what has made the song so iconic from the vocals on down. And specifically, this M1 instrument with the organ two patch, that bass sound is so iconic.

to a degree that just as playing a single note I would say evoked not just the early 90s, not just dance music that crossed over into pop, it evokes this song. It is so tied to Show Me Love by its use in it that I think any time after

it gets used, it's kind of a wink or a nod. It's kind of like an homage in a way, at least maybe to the heads that were there at the time, to the era, to this song, and to how great the song is. It also just from a DJ point of view sounds excellent. That organ sounds excellent. over loud speakers in a dance hall.

It just has the perfect echo. What's the connection to Beyonce's Break My Soul? Listen, this is not a good thing. So, Break My Soul, an incredible song. But we talked about in more detail on our Beyonce, Break My Soul episode, but Richie Webb, go back and listen to that. It's about a year and a half ago.

We went into more detail, but the takeaway that I want to sort of reinforce here is that the song is completely different from Show Me Love in terms of melody, lyrics, all the things that matter in terms of copyright law, there are no similarities. Unfortunately, in terms of the publishing, there was clearly a proactive decision was made

because Beyonce is Beyonce to protect her. Proactive and preemptive. It's preemptive and proactive. They clearly reached out to Alan and Fred's publishers and cut a deal, if you can't even call it that, where Fred McFarlane and Alan George get 48% of the publishing. Damn. On Break My Soul by Beyonce.

They make it so many percentages of other people's songs. Beyonce herself gets 10% of that song. And there isn't anything that is the same. There isn't a single thing that is the same. No, we know. It's only the preset being used is the same. The notes are different. The cords are different.

Are we worried about that setting a bad precedent? Other people have used this patch. That is 100% right, Diallo. I'm upset by this because it sets a bad precedent for the rest of us who aren't Beyonce and can't afford to pay for it. So for all, you know, going forward, anytime you use that patch, you got to pay those two guys? I don't think so. I'm going to go on record because this is a public forum and this is being recorded and hopefully people will listen to it and have some confidence.

Those fair use lawyers out there kind of grow some balls some of you guys because there's no way in hell that my use of an M1 organ preset, maybe with a house beat underneath it should be anything other. Herb Alpert every time you used a horn. It's exactly the same thing. It's an instrument. It's just a sound that is being used again. So I'm not a fan of that. Yeah. The fact that Beyonce is 48% not Beyonce in her camp's songwrecked.

Fair use lawyers, like he said, get some fight. Yeah. Push back, you guys. All these years later, what makes this song so iconic and still resonate on dance floors? You could put it down today and it would still kill. You know it. Well, listen, I think that that vocal is just a standout, amazing performance vocal. But I also think just from a sonic point of view, there's a reason why the haunting, you know,

melody that they came up with, it just works. Like to this day, like, you know, earlier we were mentioning how Rihanna used it, Kylie used it, it's used on this song. Those, that organ sounds so good when it's playing loud through the dance hall speakers.

It just cuts through. Yeah. It just sounds good. I mean, like, even if your speakers are whack and some of you nightclub owners know you all need to upgrade those speakers. Yeah. But even on bad speakers, it still sounds really,

really good. And we were even having a discussion earlier, like, would this song be a hit? with different lyrics and different vocal arrangement. I think this is obviously no shade to Robin. I think this music, this pure music, absolutely could be a hit with other vocals. In fact, I think one of the greatest mashups in dance music history is when Hardwell took Steve Angel and laid back Luke's song B and put those lyrics over Robin S and Show Me

Love. It produced this barnstorming tune of a song, which I think the long drawn-out title is show me love X, B, by Steve Angelo, Layback Luke, and Robin S, let's hear it real quick. I got to say, like, the first time I heard that song in my little AirPod. Yeah. Right in the New York subway 2009, I was just like, this is giving me chills. It's giving me chills.

And I think that, you know, you can say a disparaging thing that you want to about the drop. At the end of the day, there's something about. about marrying like a completely emotional vocal with a cool, you know, machine-driven synth line that I feel like will always work. Like to me, it's that marriage of the two that always works. And as we've been discussing this song today, what I'm struck by is that there's sort of two things going on just within the sound now to our ears. The first thing is kind of maybe inherent to the sound to a certain degree, which is that

this sound... Each of those notes is actually two notes. It's an interval. It's technically a compound perfect fifth where you've got the root note, the baseline, but then 12 and then seven more above it. So 19 half steps up is it's like a perfect fifth, but it's an octave up. The interval is from the root to the... And why that's important and why I'm breaking this down is because that is a very church sound.

the origin of a sound that's blended like that to most of our ears in modern times, the organ is where you're going to hear something like that happening pretty often. That perfect fifth interval or perfect, you know, 19th. The minute anyone ever heard the song with that vocal, there's already this churchiness, this gospelness sonically in that, mixed though with the robotic kind of nature of being a machine right there in that patch sound, which I don't know that the sound designers that in Japan had any idea they were doing it when they did that. But that's what's baked into that sound very specifically. And then, so that's in the music in 1993 when it comes out. Now, 30 plus years later, we also have the lineage of having heard the song for all these years. If you drop it in your set, it's a bit of a

historical reference. Any DJ with their two-hour set's going to have some mix of like the current hit, something maybe a little more obscure, maybe their own productions. And then at the maybe 90-minute mark, you start throwing in the kind of classics, you're going to throw the, you're going to throw this in, it gets the reaction as being a heritage house classic. Sure. And like you just said, it's the human and machine argument. One thing that I really love that Robin S said about this was, quote, first of all, when anyone listens to a song, the first thing they gravitate to is the beat. They don't hear the words. Once they infuse their bodies with the beat, then they start listening to the words. When you have the marriage of the two, it's undeniable. Nobody can say that

any better. Perfectly put. And definitely nobody can sing that any better. Okay, Luxury. for one more song. There's a segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gym with you, The One Song Nation and with each other. Luxury, do you want to go first? Certainly. Well, I think a lot of people are excited

for the new turn-style record that's coming at any minute now. My FYP has been filled with, like, the coolest-looking concert that I've ever missed from in Baltimore. So this is a track from the forthcoming record. It's called C-N-Stars. It's very different sounding,

and I had something I wanted to say about it based on some of the comments I'm seeing on the internet. But first, let's take a listen. Yeah, just basically, I'm going back on myself, right? like, fair use, high horse, because it's important. People that are commenting that this sounds like a police song, listen, I hear what you're hearing, but there is,

when the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around. I hear what you're hearing, but those are just two notes, and nothing else about it is the same, and nobody can own two notes, rhythmically the same or otherwise. Lawyers out there, copyright lawyers, record labels, get tougher about your confidence about Sting, not taking all your money, because it's available to you.

if you do the right thing. Toughen up. Diallo, what about you? What's your one more song this week? My song is going to be Frankie Nuckles. Baby wants to ride. Love it. Just, you know, maybe I'm in my Chicago zone,

but like really a big fan of early Chicago health. Totally. And I love all like in the song family, because clearly you could play that into laid back white horse. And you could play that into like erotic city by Prince and they'd all kind of fit together. They all have like a weird gallopy sound. Yeah, and a little bippy, bippy, blippy.

As always, if you have an idea for, For one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo and on TikTok at Diallo Riddle. And you can find me on Instagram at LUXX, URY and on TikTok at LuxuryXX. And hey, go follow one song on Instagram and TikTok. Follow at one song podcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube and Spotify. Just search for One Song podcast.

We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. Also be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist. For all of the songs, us in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you made it this far, that means you love us. Or at least you like the podcast. Please, please, please. Don't forget to give us five stars. Leave a

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Okay. Let's workshop that. I was really liking it. All right, thanks. Luxury help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, luxury. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And this is one song. We'll see you next time.

This episode is produced by Melissa Duanez. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo. Mixing by Michael Hardman and engineering by Eric Hicks. Production supervision by Razog Boykin. Additional production support from Z. Taylor. The show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Weil and Leslie Guam.