The 50 Best Pop Singles Of 1994 (Featuring New Interviews With Ace Of Base, TLC, Lisa Loeb, Real McCoy & Haddaway)

Robbie Daw | November 20, 2014 6:39 am

4. REAL MCCOY, “ANOTHER NIGHT”

Real McCoy Another Night 1994

Today we take for granted the marriage of memorable pop choruses sung by a charismatic female and gruff rhymes delivered by a tough-guy rapper, all laid over a thumping beat. It’s what makes a “feature” a feature, really. But jump back a few decades to the early 1990s, and this concept was just beginning to surface. A collection of European dance acts were making Americans sweat under the strobe light and slowly infiltrating the Billboard charts with melodic trakcs featuring slightly sinister-sounding rappers. You had your Captain Hollywood Project (“More And More”) and your Culture Beat (“Mr. Vain”), and let’s of course not forget Snap (“Rhythm Is A Dancer”).

The problem was getting stateside music buyers to invest their attention spans in said artists past one single. Without these groups being based within our borders and, thus, constantly popping up on our television screens and on local stages, most of offerings from the Eurodance crowd were considered to by anonymous blips on pop’s radar before disappearing into the ether…that is, until Real McCoy came along.

“You had your favorites,” Olaf “O-Jay” Jeglitza says over the phone from Berlin while reminiscing about his fellow Eurodance rappers in the ’90s. “Mine were Toni Cottura from Fun Factory, [Captain] Hollywood and [DJ] Bobo. It was a good time. We had a lot of parties. Of course, everybody thinks you’re better than the other one. For me, it was easy — I was the only one who had that much success in the States. I didn’t have to brag with them.”

O-Jay was a founding member of M.C. Sar & The Real McCoy, a German band that achieved minor success in their home country in 1990 with their On The Move! album. They busted wide open by the time 1994’s Space Invaders (retitled Another Night in the United States) arrived. In the four years between the two records, there were several lineup changes in the group, and Arista asked Real McCoy to nix the “M.C. Sar” part of their name. But O-Jay remained the one constant. By the time “Another Night,” the dance-pop track the broke the outfit, began to zip up charts in the US, it was O-Jay, Patricia Petersen and Vanessa Mason fronting Real McCoy.

“The thing is, Patricia, or Patsy, didn’t sing and Vanessa didn’t sing on the record,” O-Jay explains. “It was Karin Kasar.”

Kasar was a vocalist who had been doing session work at Boogie Park Studios in Berlin with the Berman Brothers, a sibling duo Real McCoy’s German label Hansa employed to do some additional production on “Another Night.”

“Since Patsy was not able to deliver the vocals for ‘Another Night,’ [the Berman Brothers] looked through the studio for other demo singers,” says O-Jay. “Karin was there and she was given a demo with that song, ‘Another Night,’ and she is still pissed about that — she could have sung it much, much better, but they actually used the original demo.”

Real McCoy Olaf O-Jay Jeglitza 2014

Originally released in Germany in 1993, “Another Night” peaked at #18 on the country’s Media Control chart. It would go on to far greater success throughout Europe, as well as Canada, where it hit #1. Despite this success up north, O-Jay recalls the reluctance of Arista Records chief Clive Davis to release “Another Night.”

“The interesting part, why everyone was a little scared, was Hansa was also the same [German] label [that previously had] Milli Vanilli. That’s why we needed to do a test with Clive,” O-Jay says. “Well, we had our own Milli Vanilli there. We had the singer in the studio somewhere. We had Patsy looking good, but couldn’t sing.”

A North American deal with Arista was eventually struck, and “Another Night” finally began to take off in the States — first on the Billboard dance chart, where it hit the top, and finally on the main singles chart. The bouncy track’s charm lies in the house piano hook, which is not unlike the early ‘90s “Always Coca Cola” jingle, and the smooth warmth of Kasar’s vocals coupled with O-Jay’s deep “I talk, talk, I talk to you” rap.

“Interestingly enough, there’s an original tape, which I don’t have in my possession — we have a third rap [on ‘Another Night],” O-Jay points out. “I can’t even remember what I was writing then, but we never put it on the track. “

One thing he does recall: “I worked concrete for, I think, two weeks on the lyrics. For a guy like you, okay, five minutes [you] have the lyrics finished. But me not being a native… And I also have this one big mistake in it. It’s the word ‘difference.’ I said [in the song], ‘It’s the different between lovers and fakes,’ but it [should be] ‘the difference between lovers and fakes’.”

Relative semantics aside, “Another Night” blew up on the Hot 100 and ultimately reached #3, where it was blocked from the top of the chart in winter ‘94/’95 only by Boyz II Men’s “On Bended Knee” and Ini Kamoze’s “Here Comes The Hotstepper” — “Both very cool tracks,” O-Jay says modestly. “Personally, I think they’re much cooler than ‘Another Night’.”

When all was said and done, “Another Night” became the biggest hit by a German artist in America after spending over 52 weeks on the main singles chart. Later, when the 1995 American Music Awards rolled around, “Another Night” and follow-up single “Run Away” (also a Top 5 hit) secured Real McCoy a Best New Artist statue. Three more singles from the band charted in the States, and follow-up album One More Time was released in 1997. But a year later, Real McCoy split and O-Jay eventually moved into the production side of the music business in Berlin.

There is, however, a bit of closure on the story of “Another Night”:  Over a decade after Real McCoy first enjoyed their wave of success thanks, in part, to Karin Kasar’s uncredited voice, O-Jay finally met the singer in person for the first time.

Karin Kasar singing Bruno Mars’ “Treasure” in 2013

“We talk once in awhile. We have a good relationship now,” O-Jay explains. “First time I met her, I was in Hamburg and she played me material, six songs, that she created at a time when she realized, okay, they used my voice but they won’t have me as an artist — and the reason is she was very, very large, and now she’s not large anymore. [We were told] no, she can’t be on stage; she’s not sexy; we can’t sell that product this way, blah blah blah.”

He continues, “She played me the songs, and if you would hear them now, you would definitely think, okay, this was the follow-up album of Another Night. This is the moment where you actually realize how important her voice was to all the songs.”

As we wrap up our conversation, O-Jay says that many of his contemporaries tasted a bit of success in the ‘90s, only to mistakenly believe they’d go on to become as big as Michael Jackson. That said, he maintains a rather realistic viewpoint of his own achievements.

“It was great times, super, but nothing for the history books of music,” he says, matter of fact. He then concedes, “But — and this is surprising for me; of course, I really appreciate it — ‘Another Night’ is still something kind of like a classic.” — ROBBIE DAW