Body Movin'

Album: Hello Nasty (1998)
Charted: 15
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Songfacts®:

  • Beastie Boys get some action from the back section on "Body Movin'," one of their biggest rump shakers. The song integrates a 1970 recording called "Modern Dynamic Physical Fitness Activities" by Ed Durlacher, who was best known as a square dance caller. In his recording, he goes through some basic calisthenics, but Beastie Boys chopped it up to make it sound like dance instruction ("you will do this four times with the left... four with the right").

    The various remixes, including the version used in the music video, remove the Durlacher part.
  • The steel drums that come in around the 1:40 mark are sampled from a 1973 calypso cover of Tito Puente's "Oye Como Va" by Amral's Trinidad Cavaliers.
  • Fatboy Slim did a popular remix of this song that extends it to 5:32 (the album version is 3:04). The groove on this version is a sample of a 1969 song by The Byrds called "Fido." This remix was used in the Wii game Just Dance 2.
  • In the music video, the Beastie Boys re-create scenes from a campy 1968 spy movie called Danger: Diabolik, giving them an excuse to have a sword fight, show a car careening off a cliff, and stage some skydiving. The video uses the Fatboy Slim remix and was directed by group member MCA, credited to his pseudonym Nathaniel Hornblower.
  • An explainer for some of the lyrics:

    "You know we're Krush Groovin'" - Krush Groove is a pioneering hip-hop movie the Beastie Boys appeared in alongside Run-DMC, New Edition, and Sheila E.

    "Packed like sardines in the tin" - On the album cover, the group is lying next to each other in a sardine can.

    "If you play Defender I could be your hyperspace" - Defender was a popular arcade game also available on Atari and other home systems. You control a spaceship and have to shoot all kinds of object before they hit you. If you're about to get hit, you can go into "hyperspace," which is like a panic button. It will immediately move you to somewhere else in the field of play, which might get you out of trouble but often was right in the path of an obstacle.
  • Along with "Intergalactic," this is one of the most popular songs on Beastie Boys fifth album, Hello Nasty. They used a lot of vocal effects on the track, especially the chorus, which they could do with more sophisticated processors and samplers. Early on, they used a cheap karaoke microphone to squiggle their voices.

    The album came at a transitional stage for the band when they were becoming grown-ups with families. The subsequent tour had a very different tenor, with little kids hanging around for the first time.
  • A Beastie Boys fan named Deanna Thompson who used the screen name "Baudi Moovan" got a lot of attention for her role in sleuthing out a guy who posted videos where he harmed animals. The story is told in the 2019 Netflix series Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer, which plays "Body Movin'" when Thompson explains her screen name.

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