Review
Genre and Mood
The Chemical Brothers take a lighthearted turn with The Salmon Dance. This quirky electronic piece combines funky beats with a playful rap vocal, creating a humorous and catchy tune that stands out in their discography.
Song Summary
The track shows the duo’s range, setting their electronic sound against hip-hop. The rapper Fatlip, formerly of the Los Angeles group The Pharcyde, delivers deadpan instructions for a fictional dance inspired by salmon swimming upstream, over bouncy beats and watery, bubbling electronic sounds.
Musical Breakdown
Intro: Setting the Aquatic Scene
The song opens with bubbling water sounds and a pulsing beat, immediately establishing an underwater theme. Synth elements create a slightly off-kilter atmosphere, preparing the ground for an unconventional track.
Verse 1: Introducing the Dance
Fatlip’s rap enters, describing the Salmon Dance with straight-faced humour. The backing track features a bouncy bassline and quirky electronic effects that suit the playful vocal.
Chorus: The Dance Instructions
The chorus repeats the dance instruction until it becomes the hook. The electronic elements intensify, a fun, dance-worthy beat that plays the absurdity of the lyric completely straight.
Bridge: Aquatic Breakdown
Midway through, the track breaks down into watery sound effects and treated voices, emphasising the aquatic theme and giving a short respite from the main beat.
Verse 2 and Outro: Continuing the Fishy Tale
The second verse continues the salmon’s story in the same humorous tone. As the song ends, the beat fades out, leaving final echoes of the dance instructions.
Concepts in Focus
The Salmon Dance is built on a novelty hook: a dance named in the title and repeated as an instruction. Songs like this go back to the dance crazes of the early 1960s, and they work because the hook is a command the listener can act on. The Chemical Brothers keep the music busy and inventive underneath, but it is the repeated phrase that sticks.
The music video, directed by Dom and Nic, turns the song into a story. A boy, played by Rory Jennings, watches his fish tank, where Fatlip appears as a piranha alongside “Sammy the Salmon”, a beatboxing pufferfish called Puffa and other tropical fish. It was nominated for an MTV Europe Music Award in 2007, and for many people it is the song.
The single also shows how dance labels used the remix. Alongside the radio edit (3:07), the 12-inch carried versions by the Italian duo Crookers and by Hervé, and an iTunes single offered a remix by the Glimmers, later paired with Battle Scars as a double A-side. Each moves the novelty song toward a different club. For the duo’s more hypnotic, instrumental side, compare The Chemical Brothers – Star Guitar.
Visual Companion
The video amplifies the song’s humour: the fish tank becomes a stage, with Fatlip as a rapping piranha and a cast of tropical fish, including a beatboxing pufferfish, performing for the boy outside the glass. It captures the track’s blend of electronic music and deadpan absurdity.
Cultural Impact
The Salmon Dance is the seventh track of We Are the Night, released in July 2007 by Freestyle Dust and Virgin, which entered the UK Albums Chart at number 1, the duo’s fifth consecutive chart-topping album, and won the Grammy for Best Electronic/Dance Album. Released as the album’s second single on 10 September 2007, the song reached number 27 in the UK and number 10 in New Zealand, and it was their last UK top-40 hit for 19 years, until Go reached number 4 in May 2026. It may not be the duo’s most acclaimed track, but its humour and catchy beat made it one of their most remembered, and it shows how willing Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons were to experiment with tone as well as sound.
