- Aman’s Dance Circus – RealAudio streams of exotic and unique eurodance music.
- Dance Artist Info – Information about several artists in the dance genre, for example Blümchen, 2 Brothers on the 4th Floor.
- DanceClubOnline – The Nightclubs and bars directory for the cyber world, shopping, music, news, and travel.
- Eurodance – Message board about European dance music. Includes forums about Sash, ATB and Tina Cousins, as well as general discussions.
- The Eurodance Encyclopaedia – This site gathers all the Eurodance artists with their biographies, discographies and lyrics.
- EuroDanceHits.com – Includes artist profiles, releases and reviews, dictionary, chat room, forum, and Euro-NRG Awards.
- Europemusic – Euro Dance, Progressive, Trance, Hi-Nrg. Newest singles, mixes, albums and compilations from Europe with audio samples.
- World Of Italo Music – Includes news, MP3s, video clips, photographs, and a forum.
- RollingStone.com: Sash – Includes biography, recordings, video file, and message board.
- Sash! – Official site from X-It Records. Features biographies of each of the members, a discography, studio information and a forum, moderated by the artists themselves
- SASH! Charts – A small site with almost all the charts that Sash! has been on. Extensive collection of charts from around the world.
- Sash on Dance Artist Info – Based in Sweden. Biography, discography and a short news section.
Eurodance is a dance music current that was popular in Europe, Oceania, South America, and somewhat in Canada between 1992 and 2000. Between 1993-1995 that original genre was considered a mainstream phenomenon being diversified and mixed with another electronic music genres until today. It is closely related to the so-called Euro-pop and Euro-rap, similar phenomena, all three characterized by the fact that audience and performers were mostly Western European, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium and Italy being their fief.
Its roots are drawn from the mostly rap performances of Dr. Alban or Snap, which were the first to emphasis the combo female chorus – male rap. The current became exhaustive, as performances can be included in rap, trance, techno, or house.
Its «mainstream» can be characterized by female vocals, with simple chorus, male rap parts and a strong beat from 110 to 150 BPM with synthesizer riffs. One important cliche in eurodance was sung parts that consisted of meaningless lyrics (such as «Um-bap-paa-ea-ea Um-bap-paa-oo» in Daze’s hit single Superhero or «Da Ba Dee Da Ba Die» in Eiffel 65’s hit Blue (Da Ba Dee)) [See Scat singing ].
Eurodance is very much commercial music. It can be even seen as a some kind of culmination of commerciality in music business. Some producers, like Swedish Max Martin or Italian Larry Pignagnoli, were behind dozens of bands. If band members became too demanding, they could be fired and replaced by others. Only few bands survived more than one or two records. The most successful groups are arguably the Dutch group 2 Unlimited, Italian groups Cappella, Ice MC and Eiffel 65, and German groups Snap!, Culture Beat, Real McCoy and La Bouche.
It has been suggested that many female vocalists were selected for their looks more than for talent. Live performances were mostly playbacks, sometimes different female singers performing in studio recordings than on stage. Many acts, like Captain Jack and Jonny Jakobsen (Dr. Bombay) had a carefully planned humoristic image. A group called E-rotic received attention with its erotic lyrics and music videos.
Some artists, like Aqua, Daze or Hit’n’Hide are not usually considered mainstream eurodance, but fall into the bubblegum pop category. These are, examples included, for some reason mainly Danish.
Other in between cases are Blümchen and Scooter, approaching the happy hardcore genre. Although sometimes considered eurodance, projects such as Sash!, ATB or Antiloop were mostly progressive house and trance groups.
Eurodance aroused hostility similar to that associated with disco music in the 1970s. And like the disco era, critics considered it to be shoddy, repetitive and overtly commercial.
Eurodance reached its commercial peak in the United States in 1995/1996 with the Top 40 radio success of artists such as La Bouche («Be My Lover»), Real McCoy («Another Night» and «Runaway») , 2 Unlimited («Get Ready For This») and Corona («Rhythm Of The Night») among others. Sales in the hundreds of thousands of the first eurodance CD compilation series, DMA Dance: Eurodance, released on U.S. independent label Interhit (formed by Jeff Johnson and Chris Cox of Thunderpuss) in conjunction with Dance Music Authority magazine, provided further evidence of the popularity of the eurodance sound in the USA.
Later into the 90s trance was starting to influence eurodance which rebirthed into euro-trance, which also incorporated some elements from progressive house. Artists like Scooter, Charly Lownoise and Mental Theo and E-Type began the trend which lead to the birth of hundreds of projects in this subgenre.
