Jack

Album: Single Release Only (2013)
Charted: 9
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Songfacts®:

  • Ben Westbeech is an English musician originating from Hertfordshire who spent his formative musical years in Bristol, but later moved to Amsterdam. Trained as a cellist and vocalist, he also produces and DJs under the moniker Breach.
  • This House tune was Westbeech's first song to reach the UK singles charts under his Breach pseudonym, though he had previously written the vocal for Redlight's Breakthrough hit " Get Out My Head."
  • The song is a tribute to house music's frequent imperative in the late 1980s to those on the dance floor that they should "jack." The term "jack" comes from Chicago house slang and recalls the act of frenetically dancing to a house beat. It frequently cropped up in lyrics and song titles, starting with Chicago artist Steve "Silk" Hurley's "Jack Your Body," which was one of the first House hits in the UK, reaching #1 in January 1987. The same month saw Raze enter the UK Top 20 with "Jack the Groove" and a number of others followed including Mirage's "Jack Mix II" and "Jack Mix IV" as well as Hithouse's "Jack To The Sound Of The Underground."

    Even the leading pop songwriting and record producing trio Stock, Aitken and Waterman latched onto the jack bandwagon with "I'd Rather Jack," which was a #8 hit for The Reynolds Girls. A protest song complaining that their tunes weren't being played on the radio anymore as they preferred older acts, it famously found the popsmiths proclaiming that "they'd rather jack than Fleetwood Mac."

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