Review
Genre and Mood
Hooverphonic built Badaboum at a crossroads that Alex Callier named himself: disco on one side, a Hitchcock soundtrack on the other. Reviewers added trip-hop to the list. The result is pop that is groovy and playful with a mysterious edge, a song about the tension between a man and a woman.
Song Summary
Alex Callier, the band’s bassist, songwriter and producer, described Badaboum as a mix of disco music and a Hitchcock soundtrack, dance beats set against melancholy strings. He wrote it with the two singers, Emilie Satt, who sings in French, and Neil Thomas, who sings in English. The Ancienne Belgique heard it as dripping with the intriguing tension between man and woman, with an infectious rhythm. The memorable detail is that tension, carried by two voices in two languages.
Musical Breakdown
No source we found walks through Badaboum part by part, so this breakdown stays with what its maker and its critics describe. Callier’s own formula is dance beats against melancholy strings. On The Singles Jukebox, Alfred Soto picked out the strings and the French bits; Brad Shoup heard a funky-house rhythm section under Emilie Satt and found the whole danceable but also clandestine; Iain Mew thought the bass and strings worked well together but the vocal interplay was overly stagy. Katherine St Asaph preferred the parts that recalled Brigitte’s Eden to the disco-funk ones. Shoup also counted what he called the Venga-boums, the title word turned into a recurring hook. Listen for those elements and decide which reading you share.
Concepts in Focus
Badaboum is a lesson in the <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist as a whole method. After years with one voice per album, Hooverphonic made In Wonderland without a permanent singer, inviting guests so that each song had its own character. Here two guests become the song’s drama.
The bassline is Callier’s instrument. On The Singles Jukebox, John Seroff called the song a languid, spacier, bass-ier Belgian trip-hop take on Hit the Road Jack, and even a sceptical Iain Mew found that the bass and strings worked well together.
The single also travelled as a remix: Alle Farben’s version, released in 2016 as a radio edit, an extended mix and a French version, turned up on Belgian dance compilations that year. Compare his own summer house on Alle Farben, Graham Candy – Sometimes.
Artistic Context
Hooverphonic formed in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, around Alex Callier and the guitarist Raymond Geerts. Badaboum, released in 2015, was the first single from their ninth studio album In Wonderland, which followed on 11 March 2016 on Columbia and Sony Music. The band’s original singer Geike Arnaert later returned, and with her Hooverphonic represented Belgium at Eurovision 2021.
Impact and Reception
Badaboum reached number three in Flanders and number seven in Wallonia, and In Wonderland topped the Flemish album chart. The Singles Jukebox was split, with an average score of 4.57 out of 10: some welcomed a trip-hop revival, others asked for the style to stay in the past. Listen with the lights low and decide which half of Callier’s idea wins.
