Ride on Time
"Ride on Time" is a song by the Italian house music group Black Box. It was released as a single in July 1989 and included on Black Box's debut album, Dreamland (1990).
This article is about the Black Box song. For the MAX song, see Ride on Time (MAX song). For the Tatsuro Yamashita album, see Ride on Time (album)."Ride on Time"
31 July 1989[1]
- 4:37 (album version)
- 4:10 (Massive mix edit)
- Daniele Davoli
- Mirko Limoni
- Valerio Semplici
- Dan Hartman
Groove Groove Melody
The Black Box member Daniele Davioli described "Ride on Time" as an attempt to create a dance track with the power of a rock song. The first version used an unlicensed vocal sample from the 1980 single "Love Sensation" by Loleatta Holloway. After the copyright owners took legal action, the single was reissued with rerecorded vocals by Heather Small, who later found fame as the vocalist of M People. For television appearances, Black Box hired the model Katrin Quinol to mime the vocals.
In Italy, "Ride on Time" was released by Discomagic Records. In the UK, it was released by Deconstruction and popularised by the DJs Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling. It topped the UK Singles Chart for six weeks and became the UK's bestselling single of 1989. It also topped the charts in Iceland and Ireland, and entered the top 10 of several other European countries. "Ride on Time" has appeared in critics' lists of the best house tracks, and in 2020 the Guardian named it one of the greatest UK number ones.
Recording[edit]
"Ride on Time" was written and produced by the Italian production team Groove Groove Melody, comprising Daniele Davoli, Mirko Limoni and Valerio Semplici.[7] Davoli said that as Italian rock music was not taken seriously, "Ride on Time" was the group's attempt to create a song with the power of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple with a dance beat.[8]
Davoli visited New York City and bought a 12-inch a cappella copy of "Love Sensation", a 1980 single by Loleatta Holloway, planning to use it to create mashups.[7] In Italy, he was introduced to samplers, and persuaded the club where he worked to buy an Akai S900 sampler. He created the first version of "Ride on Time" using the S900 to sample the "Love Sensation" vocals.[7] Limoni added piano chords and additional vocal samples.[7] The group also added a sample of the 1973 single "Love's Theme" by the Love Unlimited Orchestra.[9] The basic backing track was finished in less than an hour, but it took weeks to finalise the ordering of the samples.[8]
The song title derives from the sampled lyric "right on time". Owing to the group's limited English, they thought the line was "ride on time".[10]
Miming[edit]
For their performance on the British music series Top of the Pops, Black Box hired the model Katrin Quinol to mime the vocals, as "none of us three blokes from Italy would be convincing replacements for Loleatta Holloway".[8] Quinol also appeared in the music video and other performances.[7] Davoli said, "You could tell those vocals didn't come from a slim girl like her. But she had a great influence on the public – she had the moves on stage and looked great and of the time."[12]
The miming drew criticism, which surprised the group, as it was normal on Italian television. Davoli said he regretted using Quinol: "It was wrong. But in Italy, a lot of people used to sing on a record and labels would ask young people to become the image ... We looked at American and English artists and realised they don't do that."[7] The group allowed Quinol to perform in Europe under the Black Box name.[8]
Sales[edit]
"Ride on Time" entered the UK Singles Chart at number 28 in the week of 12 August 1989.[14] Boosted by demand for the import, it reached number one in its fifth week, on 3 September 1989.[7] It topped the chart for six weeks and became the UK's bestselling single of 1989.[7] Black Box were surprised at the success; Limoni said they had expected at best to sell 1,000 copies to be played in clubs.[10]
"Ride on Time" reached number one in Iceland and Ireland, number two in Sweden and Greece, and entered the top ten in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and West Germany. It reached number four on the Eurochart Hot 100, a chart based on the singles charts of 17 European countries. In Australia and New Zealand, "Ride on Time" reached number two. In the United States, it reached number 39 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart.[17]
As of 2018, "Ride on Time" had been streamed over nine million times on Spotify.[7] It is certified gold in Sweden,[18] silver in France[19] and platinum in Australia and the UK.[20][21]