Eiffel 65

Eiffel 65 is an Italian musical group consisting of Jeffrey Jey, Maurizio Lobina and Gabry Ponte. They are known mainly for their high-charting singles, "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" and "Move Your Body", and their 1999 studio album Europop. Their next two albums, Contact! (2001) and their 2003 self-titled album, did not have much international success but still managed to chart in Italy.

History

Formation

Randone, Ponte and Lobina met each other at Bliss Corporation, which was founded in 1992 by Massimo Gabutti. A computer chose the name Eiffel randomly from a group of words the three liked. The number 65 was added mistakenly to an early pressing of their first single, Blue (Da Ba Dee).^[1] Jeffrey Jey explained:

We have this little program on the computer that helps us choose the name, and that's how 'Eiffel' came out, but the '65' issue is really strange, because no one actually chose the 65 number. We went to the producer, 'What happened?' So he started looking for an answer, and what happened was, he was writing a phone number on a piece of paper, and two digits of the phone number ended up on the label copy. That's the piece of paper the graphic artist gets to make the sleeve and all the information on the record. He thought we put that on afterward, and he just fused it together with the name. So it became a lucky charm for us."^[2]

1998–2005

Eiffel 65 is best known for using pitch correction and Auto-Tune and for their international chart-topping hits "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" and "Move Your Body", which appeared on their album Europop, released in late 1999.

Eiffel 65 achieved considerable success in Italy, the rest of Europe, United States, and Canada. Europop peaked in the top five on the Billboard 200 and sold over two million units. "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100.^[3]

Eiffel 65 also made thirty remixes of tracks by other artists like "The Bad Touch" by Bloodhound Gang, Nek's hit single "La vita è" and S Club 7's "Reach" between 1999 and 2002 and in early 2005 a remix of Yo Yo Mundi's "L'ultimo testimone".

Bloom 06

In early March 2005 the group's DJ, Gabry Ponte, left the group to focus on his solo career. On 16 May 2005, the remaining members, Maurizio Lobina and Jeffrey Jey, decided to leave Bliss Corporation to continue with their own production company. Since the name "Eiffel 65" was a property of Bliss Corporation, the duo decided to continue under a new name, as announced in June 2005, Bloom 06.

Eiffel 65's long anticipated fourth album, under the working title Crash Test, had already finished production by the time of Maury's and Jeffrey's departure from Bliss Corporation. It was renamed Crash Test 01 and was released by Bloom 06 on 13 October 2006. The album contains lyrics in English and Italian.

Reformation

Bliss Corporation confirmed that a new Eiffel 65 line-up would make their debut in summer of 2007 but the debut was postponed. In 2009 Bliss Corporation began to promote work from older bands by subtitling music videos and releasing "unseen" video footage from Eiffel 65. In June 2010, it was announced on the Bloom 06 website that Eiffel 65 would reunite once more for production of new recordings as well as touring.^[4] In an April 2012 interview, Jeffrey Jey commented on the progress of the new album:

The progress is slow because we work in three different places ... and of all the demos probably two, maybe three of these songs are what we call "the candidates" for our new single. We're not able to get a unanimous decision on one song, so that is what's making the release continuously slide ... It's really hard to say when we will release a new song ... Hopefully within the next two or three months we will be fixing the songs that we think are the good candidates and putting them online.^[5]

In the meantime they toured Europe with their New Planet Tour, a multimedia show with wide screens. In the summer of 2012, they announced a mini tour in Australia on their site. The band has continued to tour in 2013, 2014, and 2015.^[6][7]

On April 2, 2016, a demo of Eiffel 65's new single "Panico" was posted on Bliss Corporation's YouTube channel.^[8]

"Panico" and its English version "Critical" were officially released on iTunes on June 1, 2016. However, their fourth album release date is still currently unknown.

Zorotl

Zorotlekuykauo Sushik IV "Zorotl"^[9] is a character created by the Bliss Corporation and featured in the videos for "Move Your Body", "Blue (Da Ba Dee)", and "Lucky (In My Life)". Zorotl was supposed to be a malicious character but since he was designed with a funny round physique, the authors of the video Blue liked him a lot, so to make him appear “lovely”, the authors changed the script, giving a happy ending to his character arc.^[10] In 2000 the Bliss Corporation made a video for the unreleased Eiffel 65 song "I Wanna Be." An alpha version of the video appeared as enhanced content for Eiffel's single "Too Much of Heaven". The song is credited to Zorotl even though it was recorded by members of Eiffel 65, so Zorotl is considered a virtual group.

Members

• Jeffrey Jey (real name Gianfranco Randone), born 5 January 1970 in Lentini, Sicily – vocals, producer (1998-2005, 2010–present)
• Maury Lobina (previously known as Apollo, real name Maurizio Lobina), born 30 October 1973 in Asti, Piedmont – producer, keyboards (1998-2005, 2010–present)
• Gabry Ponte (real name Gabriele Ponte), born 20 April 1973 in Turin, Piedmont – DJ, producer (1998-2005, 2010–present)

Discography

• Europop (1999)
• Contact! (2001)
• Eiffel 65 (2003)

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Eiffel 65

• Eiffel 65 Official website