| "Star 69" / "Weapon of Choice" | ||||||||||||||
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| Single by Fatboy Slim | ||||||||||||||
| from the album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars | ||||||||||||||
| Released | 23 April 2001 | |||||||||||||
| Recorded | 2000 | |||||||||||||
| Genre | Big beat | |||||||||||||
| Length | 5:45 | |||||||||||||
| Label | Skint, Astralwerks | |||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Norman Cook | |||||||||||||
| Producer | Norman Cook | |||||||||||||
| Fatboy Slim singles chronology | ||||||||||||||
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"Star 69" and "Weapon of Choice" are two songs by English big beat musician Fatboy Slim, released as a double A-side single from his third studio album, Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. The single peaked at No. 10 on the UK Singles Chart.
The music video for "Weapon of Choice" features actor Christopher Walken dancing. It won multiple awards at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards and earned a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Video.
Contents |
"Star 69" features stronger house music influences. The vocals on the song consist almost entirely of the repeating verse, "They know what is what, but they don't know what is what, they just strut. What the fuck?", sampled from "I Get Deep" by Roland Clark, which was also used on Fatboy Slim's song "Song for Shelter".
A radio edit of the track exists with the word "fuck" taken out. "Star 69" is popular with DJs and has often been remixed and used in mashups due to the vocal hook.
"Weapon of Choice" features Parliament-Funkadelic and Bootsy's Rubber Band bassist Bootsy Collins, who provides the lead vocals on the song. The song features a prominent sample of Sly & the Family Stone's 1968 song "Into My Own Thing", as well as samples from "All Strung Out Over You" by The Chambers Brothers and "Word Play" by The X-Ecutioners, the latter of which was previously sampled on Fatboy Slim's song "Don't Forget Your Teeth", the B-side to his single "Right Here, Right Now".
The chorus of the song, "You could go with this, you could go with that...", is a homage to the Black Sheep song "The Choice Is Yours", which features a similar chorus. The line "If you walk without rhythm/You won't attract the worm..." refers to the science fiction novel Dune.
The "Attack Hamster Edit" version of the song, featured on Fatboy Slim's greatest hits album The Greatest Hits – Why Try Harder, does not have the distortion effects on Collins' voice. It peaked at No. 137 on the UK Singles Chart. The song was briefly featured in the 2001 film Joe Somebody, and was also featured in the Malcolm in the Middle episode "Malcolm vs. Reese".
On the album, the song segues from "Retox" and thus the ending of "Retox" is on this track. At 5:06 on the "single version", the last second (5:05) gets repeated many times until it finishes at 5:36. However, on the album, the last two seconds get repeated until 5:23, and scratching sounds start at 5:14 until the conclusion at 5:45. The single version and album version also have several other differences, including the ordering of vocal snippets towards the five minute mark.
The song is perhaps best known for its accompanying music video, which was filmed in the Los Angeles Marriott in December 2000. Directed by Spike Jonze and featuring actor Christopher Walken, who was trained as a dancer in musical theatre before his acting career, it features Walken dancing and flying around in the empty hotel to the music.
The "Weapon of Choice" video won six MTV awards in 2001.[1] Pullman was awarded one of MTV's "Moonmen" for Best Choreography. The clip was also ranked number one in a list of the top 100 videos of all time by VH1 in April 2002 that was compiled from a music industry survey.[2]
The video was spoofed at the end of the episode "Life Slaver" of the animated cartoon 6teen, which regularly features a character who is a parody of Walken. The video was also spoofed in Australia by the Nine Network team. Another spoof was done in 2011 for the promo of the second season of the Greek version of the TV series Dancing with the Stars for ANT1 TV, with judge Giannis Latsios taking the role of Walken.[3]
| CD1 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Length | |||||||
| 1. | "Star 69" (full version) | 5:57 | |||||||
| 2. | "Star 69" (radio edit) | 3:35 | |||||||
| 3. | "Weapon of Choice" | 5:38 | |||||||
| 4. | "Weapon of Choice" (video) | 3:31 | |||||||
| CD2 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Length | |||||||
| 1. | "Star 69 (Timo Maas remix)" | 7:10 | |||||||
| 2. | "Star 69 (X-Press 2 Wine 'Em, Dine 'Em, 69 'Em Mix)" | 8:20 | |||||||
| 3. | "Star 69 (DJ Godfather Detroit Getto-Tek Mix 1)" | 4:03 | |||||||
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Star 69" | |
| 2. | "Star 69 (Timo Maas remix)" | |
| 3. | "Star 69 (DJ Delite)" |
| Chart (2001) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| UK Singles Chart | 101 |
| U.S. Billboard Modern Rock Tracks | 332 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Club Play | 33, 104 |
| Chart (2006) |
Peak position |
| UK Singles Chart | 1375 |
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