Haddaway – What Is Love
1993 · Directed by Volker Hannwacker
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Best comments
1.“I still don't know what love is.”
More comments
- 2.“Questions that will always be unanswered: 1) Who let the dogs out? 2) What does the fox say? 3) Annie, are you OK? 4) What is love?”
- 3.“1991: What is love? 2021: What is love?”
The story
Haddaway was singing on demos for a small German label called Coconut Records when producers Dee Dee Halligan and Junior Torello picked him for this one. Those names are pseudonyms, by the way, for a production duo based near Cologne. What Is Love came out in January 1993 and went to number one in 13 countries, number two in the UK and Germany, and number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100. Under all that Eurodance thump, Songfacts points out, it's a song about loving someone who won't love you back.
Volker Hannwacker directed the video at Mentmore Towers, where Haddaway gets pursued by three femme fatales, at least one of them a vampire. Some scenes run backwards, just to keep you off balance. MTV Europe put it in heavy rotation that May.
Then came the second life. Saturday Night Live built its Roxbury Guys sketches around the song, with Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan bobbing their heads in sync at the club. That became the 1998 movie A Night at the Roxbury and, later, one of the internet's favorite memes. Thirty-plus years on, try hearing it without your neck moving.
