The Tide Begins to Turn

If you haven’t already figured it out, I love dance music. Adults in my life, particularly my mother, introduced me to a wide variety of music from across time. But dance music is pretty much what I always listened to when I was by myself. I saved up my minimal allowance and from whatever small jobs I could find as a child and purchased every European dance music compilation I could both find and afford, and some American ones too. 

This started for me in the late 1990s. I was born in 1988, so I started listening to dance music by myself before I was 10 years old. If anyone was questioning whether or not I am queer, there’s your answer. I loved the freedom afforded by dancing, although I wasn’t able to share this love with anyone else until adulthood. 

The first remix I remember hearing and really digging was Armand Van Helden’s remix of Tori Amos’s “Professional Widow,” on Bay Area radio station Live 105, in 1997. Many years later, I would discover that Tori Amos is my favorite live performer, but for totally different reasons than this remix, which is one of a small group of remixes credited with bringing remixes that radically transform songs into the mainstream.

The first genre of dance music that I really liked as a genre, though, is now lovingly referred to as Eurodance. Quite a bit of the most successful Eurodance was released in the early 1990s; much of it was introduced to the American music-listening audience in a cringey compilation series called “Jock Jams.” Think 2 Unlimited’s “Get Ready 4 This,” Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam,” and Snap!’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer.” By the late 1990s, the core Eurodance movement had splintered into several other subgenres, including vocal trance, which was centered in Belgium. It also led to a variety of other areas, like Italodance (Eiffel 65), electro house (Benny Benassi), and the Swedish pop revival (Max Martin, writing for Ace of Base). 

By 2001, Eurodance was well past its peak of popularity, but still going strong. In the vocal trance arena, which is very closely related to Eurodance, there is a group who pretty much got zero airplay in the U.S., even though the song I’m writing about was #1 in Belgium and #2 in Germany. 

The song is “Turn the Tide” by Sylver. It was made at a time where good-looking Europeans with a synthesizer and a recording studio could make a whole career out of it. Out of all of the songs in the genre, I’m choosing this one. 

“Turn the Tide” is brilliant because it just keeps on building on top of itself. The song starts out simple, with a basic backbeat, and a simple melody. It keeps adding more layers of instrumentation. Around the 30-second mark, Sylvie De Bie’s voice cuts in, clear and strong. She starts singing simple lyrics about how she was at fault in what went wrong in a relationship. Before the 1-minute mark, the song continues adding more layers of music. By 1:30, all of the instrumentation drops away, leaving just a stuttering baseline. Sylvie cuts in with the first chorus, and you think “where is this song going?” By the time her voice sustains the first high note, suddenly all the previous instrumentation returns, all at once. Shortly after the 2-minute mark, you realize you’re in the middle of an absolutely epic song. The instrumentation cuts in and out throughout the rest of the song, leaving you constantly uncertain of where you’re at. It’s the sheer power of dance music: you get to experience the highs and lows along with the creators.

I’m choosing to include the music video mix of the song rather than the original album version on Sylver’s debut album, Chances. The Chances version is over 8 minutes, and most of it is just long music-only intro and outro. The build-up is much slower, to the point that I think shorter versions of the song are more enjoyable. If you click the link for YouTube below, it will show you the original music video, as well.

Side note: vocal trance is so much fun. Ian Van Dahl’s album Ace and DJ Encore and Engelina’s album Intuition are great, great albums to listen to. It’s generally pretty light, fluffy music with low stakes, but that’s what makes it the most fun.

Go, go down the rabbit hole. Yes, that’s right. See what made 13-year-old Alexis lose their shit, alone in their bedroom late at night after everyone else had gone to bed.