Weapon of Choice (song)

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"Weapon of Choice" is a song by Fatboy Slim, aka Norman Cook, released in 2001. Bootsy Collins (Parliament/Funkadelic and Bootsy's Rubber band bassist) provided the lead vocals. The track peaked at #10 on the British music charts, along with "Star 69" from the same album. "Weapon of Choice" features a prominent sample of Sly & the Family Stone's 1968 recording "Into My Own Thing". It can be heard on the album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars.

The song is best known for its accompanying music video starring actor Christopher Walken and directed by Spike Jonze. In the video, Walken dances and flies around in an empty hotel lobby to the music. The "Weapon of Choice" video won six MTV awards in 2001[1]; as one of the video's MTV "Moonmen" was for Best Choreography, Walken became a Video Music Award winner. The clip was also cited as the best video of all time in April 2002, in a list of the top 100 videos of all time that was compiled from a music industry survey by UK music TV channel VH1.[2]

The song was used as a station ID for the Nine television network in Australia, introduced early in 2002.

The video can be seen here (Windows Media Player) and here (RealPlayer) courtesy of AstralWerks.com. It is also available for purchase at the iTunes Store.

The song draws a few things from Frank Herbert's novel Dune. The lyric, "If you walk without rhythm, it won't attract the worm," is the same advice given by Paul Atreides to Lady Jessica. On the planet Arrakis, also called Dune, sandworms living underground are attracted to steady rhythms. The advice given by Paul is meant to keep anyone safe from sandworms if they have to walk on the surface of the planet. Another Dune reference is the so-called "Weapon of Choice" itself, which could be one of two things: a subculture of witches called the Bene Gesserit who have an ability called "the Voice", which lets them give irresistible commands to others, bypassing their victims' higher brain functions. The effect used on the singer's voice is very similar to how someone's speech sounds when they're using "the Voice" in the film adaptation. The other possible reference to the "Weapon of Choice" comes from the David Lynch film, in which the Fremen learn to use a weapon called a Weirding Module (not mentioned in the book), which translates certain spoken sounds into focused attacks that can be fired at a target.

[edit] Trivia

• This song was in the commercial of The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour.
• In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Libby Folfax played a little bit of the song with a different instrument on the episode "Vanishing Act".
• This song is used as a sound bed by EMAP, GCap Media and Tindle radio stations.