Okay, I admit, I like cheesy dance music. Now with that out of the way, I saw this video on a dance channel a few months back and have loved it ever since. However, I have heard nothing else of. Is it a new song? I live in Southern Ontario, not exactly the dance music capital of the world, but I have never heard this song played on the radio or at clubs, etc. Was it a brief fad that died out really quickly? Or was it never popular to begin with and I only saw the video because I was watching the station at like 2:00am?
Basically what I’m asking is when was this song released, and assuming it is in fact a new song, considering how damn catchy it is, why hasn’t it caught on yet?
I understand it was really huge in European clubs during 2004 (or was it 2003?) with lots of different versions released. I think its just now hitting the American coast, though I’m thinking not with the sort of popularity it supposedly had across the pond.
Here is a recent thread that has some links in it about the song. (Including a translation, you can buy O-zone’s albums on Amazon.com btw.) I too like the song, and I found some cool sites, so I put up the links I found.
Some background about O-Zone, this probably contains some mistakes: the band members are originally Moldavian, but been living in Bucharest for several years, and to my understanding O-Zone was formed in Romania. Discozone is their second album, released in 2003, and Dragostea din tei was popular single in Romania late 2003.
However in January a couple of Romanian immigrants in Italy, called Haiducii (name taken from Dragostea lyrics), recorded the song and the cover quickly rose in Italian charts. This caused bitter debates of plagiarism among Romanian communities, but O-Zone now realized that their song has potential and released the original single in Italy. It failed, though. Anyway, during the spring 2004 both bands got big contracts for their singles. Haiducii’s version was released in at least half a dozen countries with moderate success. But O-Zone had released the single in practically every European country by late summer, and Dragostea din tei was a huge success. It spent 14 weeks as number 1 single in Swiss charts and 13 weeks in Austria, for example, and was the biggest eurodance hit last year, leading to successful international release of the album too. Don’t know whether it’ll get the same following in other continents, maybe that was a unique “summer hit” phenomenon . O-Zone’s 2nd international single Despre tine, while popular, hasn’t been the same kind of hit in Western Europe.
. O-Zone’s 2nd international single Despre tine, while popular, hasn’t been the same kind of hit in Western Europe.