Released: 16th June 2003
Writers: Mike Stock / Steve Crosby / Sandy Rass / Eric Dikeb / Martin Neumayer / Bob Patmore
Peak position: #2
Chart run: 2-2-3-8-9-11-14-21-22-30-39-46-62-72
The Fast Food Rockers’ debut single turned a well-known playground rhyme into a fully-fledged pop track. And with one of the UK’s most successful songwriters backing them, there was little doubt that – like it or not – Fast Food Song was heading towards the top of the charts.
In the annals of chart history, Fast Food Song, and indeed Fast Food Rockers themselves, may be notionally dismissed as a novelty with a limited shelf-life (which isn’t entirely unreasonable). Yet they were the product of several factors that converged in the early ‘00s, after decades in the making.
The group were signed to Better The Devil Records, an independent label created by Mike Stock, one third of Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), the writing and production trio who amassed more than 100 top 40 hits in the UK. After parting with Pete Waterman in the early ‘90s, Mike Stock and Matt Aitken continued working together, enjoying success with acts such as Nicki French, Robson & Jerome, Scooch and Girls@Play. However, as the decade wore on, the premises that housed their studio deteriorated. Eventually, it became so compromised that the duo could no longer work with established artists; the studio was sold, and the partnership dissolved.
That left Mike Stock to set up a new home-run studio and his own label. Better The Devil Records was established with an awareness that the commercial appetite for acts like those he’d previously worked with had waned as pop music evolved to take itself more seriously. Fast Food Song subsequently became the label’s first release, but it wasn’t intended as a derisive social commentary or even an attempt to push back against the evolution of the charts. Instead, the song represented something much purer to Mike Stock. It was innocent, fun and a bit silly; essentially, the things that drew him into the music industry and a remedy to the cynicism he’d developed to navigate the many challenges thrown his way. Whether Fast Food Song – and, by association, Fast Food Rockers – were the optimal manifestation of that desire is debatable. Still, Mike Stock was under no illusions about how this was likely to be perceived.
The track’s origins lie in a Moroccan children’s song called A Ram Sam Sam, which is often performed with simple hand actions and at increasing speed. There isn’t a definitive point at which the lyrics evolved to reference fast food; however, it’s generally attributed to the Scouts and Guides as a campfire song that started to be taught around the mid-’80s. From there, Fast Food Song gradually became more widely known, but never quite to the point of ubiquity. Though it undoubtedly infiltrated many schools and playgrounds during the ensuing decades, it was also still entirely possible to grow up not encountering the song at all. That is, until the early ‘00s, when Danish personality Eric Dikeb extrapolated it into a full-length track titled Pizza ha-ha.
Fast Food Song subsequently became one of several adaptations of Pizza-ha-ha. Most notably, Burger Dance – featuring Eric Dikeb alongside DJ Ötzi – peaked at #1 in Germany. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that could’ve been the iteration which reached the UK, given it’d only been a year since DJ Ötzi scored his third top ten single with Hey Baby (Unofficial World Cup Remix). However, it was Fast Food Song that became the means by which the track and the Fast Food Rockers arrived here. The trio – Ria Scott, Lucy Meggit and Martin Rycroft – allegedly met at a fast-food convention in Folkestone (a detail that seems too specific to be made up, yet too obscure to verify). They were accompanied by their canine mascot, Hot Dog, an anthropomorphic costumed character. Whether the concept needed to be quite so gimmicky and naff to realise Mike Stock’s ambition, there’s certainly no denying that Fast Food Rockers were a pop music oddity of the most frivolous kind that stood out in a rapidly evolving chart landscape.
The common denominator between all the versions of Pizza-ha-ha is the chorus, which remains unchanged (apart from some minor deviations in dialect). In that regard, it’s the most important part of Fast Food Song – since it’s the leading hook and the reason the rest of the track exists – but also the least interesting from a creative perspective. With nursery rhyme-like simplicity, the chorus is a relentless juggernaut of an earworm: “A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut; a Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut; McDonald’s, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut; McDonald’s, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut”. The Fast Food Rockers’ rendition is functionally performed to deliver no more or less than is needed to ensure the track is as immediate and inescapable as intended. Indeed, the only surprise is that it’d taken around two decades for something with such resoundingly obvious novelty appeal to be turned into a commercially released single.
What sets Fast Food Song apart from most other interpretations of Pizza-ha-ha is that it constructs actual verses around the chorus with a narrative (of sorts) that expands the fast food theme with a thinly-concealed sexual subtext: “I want it, I need it, nothing else can beat it, hot and spicy, whenever I’m in town; enticing, exciting, aroma so inviting, and when it hits me, I wanna take you home”. Unsurprisingly, subtlety isn’t a quality exuded by Fast Food Song. Even so, the lyrics deftly toe the family-friendly line and remain appropriately innocuous for a younger audience. Moreover, there’s commendable – and somewhat unappreciated – songwriting skill evident in the composition of the verses. They flow melodically and rhythmically between the distinctive chorus, ensuring the track sounds like a cohesive whole, rather than individual elements stitched haphazardly together (which is not the case for some of the other versions…).
Yet, that’s not to say Fast Food Song doesn’t fall victim to throwing in a few too many ideas for its modest three-minute running time. One of the highlights is the pre-chorus: “I think of you and lick my lips, you got the taste I can’t resist, can’t resist, can’t resist…”, which is crafted with a pop sensibility befitting of Mike Stock’s involvement. It functions as a seamless transition into the chorus. However, the rousing, uplifting ascension is all too fleeting and prematurely interrupted with a chant of: “Let’s eat…to the beat”. Elsewhere, Fast Food Song is intermittently punctuated with a string of topical exclamations (“Would you like that to go?”) and – curiously – some throat-clearing coughs. There’s even a throbbing, salsa-inspired: “Does anyone fancy a shake?” middle-eight breakdown that is unexpectedly intense. Ultimately, Fast Food Song is knowingly constructed with an awareness that the chorus is the selling point and – for better or worse – stops at nothing to hold attention in-between.
The accompanying music video for Fast Food Song faced several challenges. As the first release from an independent label, there wasn’t a huge budget, and that is very apparent. Furthermore, none of the brands name-checked in the song are overtly referenced in the visuals, except for the pre-existing choreography that accompanied the song since its campfire origins.
The theming is instead carried by the Fast Food Rockers, who are dressed in garish, primary-coloured, plastic-looking outfits, accompanied by Hot Dog (after breaking him out of a cage) and driving around in a fast-food van, wittily called Happy Wheels. Yet, there’s a juxtaposition between the group’s cartoonish outfits and static backdrops that lean heavily on a grimy colour palette of brown, grey, and sandy orange. Despite being interspersed with bright animated segues, there’s no clear link between the two styles; it almost appears as if the Fast Food Rockers turned up at the wrong set and were left with no choice but to shoot the dance sequences regardless.
Even so, Fast Food Song’s visuals fundamentally do what they need to. Each member of the group gets an introductory cutaway shot with their name, the simple-to-follow choreography is shown repeatedly, and the more vivid aesthetic aspects cut through many of the music videos shown on television at the time. The consequence of all this, though, is that it frames the Fast Food Rockers squarely as a novelty act aimed at a young audience, where even those at the older end of the preteen spectrum are likely to consider them juvenile. There’s little – if anything at all – that teen or adult demographics are likely to appreciate, even in an ironic sense. Perhaps that was the intention, and the group’s potential beyond this single would always be limited. But if there was any long-term potential for a new bubblegum pop to exist, it was squandered by pigeon-holing them to this extent so soon.
Even so, there was never any doubt that Fast Food Song would be a hit, hence the weary sense of inevitability from critics. And it was, albeit perhaps not quite to the extent many expected. Despite dubious claims that 100,000 copies of the single had been pre-ordered, the track sold 32,000 copies to debut and peak at #2 behind Evanescence’s Bring Me To Life, which maintained a comfortable lead (36,400 copies) to spend its third week atop the chart. That gap remained fairly consistent the following week (Fast Food Song sold a further 30,100 copies compared to Bring Me To Life’s 34,300 copies) before the track began its descent.
It’s not to suggest that Fast Food Song underperformed. There are certainly times during the preceding years when the novelty aspect might’ve propelled the track more decisively to the top of the chart. However, as Mike Stock observed, the landscape changed so significantly in the early ‘00s that this is probably about as big as an act like Fast Food Rockers was ever likely to be in 2003. Even the inevitable festive remix of Fast Food Song (“A Christmas tree, a Christmas tree, a turkey dinner and a Christmas tree…”) that followed months later was confined to a B-side, rather than released outright as it might’ve been several years earlier.
Even so, with everyone involved likely aware of Fast Food Rockers’ limited shelf-life, there was little harm in persevering to see how far the concept could be stretched. And, while it wasn’t unreasonable to assume the group had fulfilled their purpose after Fast Food Song, this was not their final top ten hit.
