Europop (album)

The title of Europop describes its genre; it combines several dance styles unique to European countries, such as the United Kingdom's trip hop, Germany's techno, and Italy's dance music, and songs are structured like typical pop songs. The album follows a deep house template featuring vocoder vocal effects, synthesizer hooks, and "nursery rhyme choruses," with occasional deviations from it into string-orchestrated hip-hop ("Living in a Bubble") and "trippy" house stylings ("Now is Forever" and "Europop"). Elements of 1980s synthpop dominate, with reviews making comparisons to Depeche Mode (especially towards "Your Clown"), Erasure, a-ha, and Duran Duran. The album features pitch-corrected vocals and Euro disco beats throughout. Eiffel 65 perform all the songs on this album in English. ==Reception==

Contemporaneous reviews from Entertainment Weekly, the Houston Chronicle, and The Plain Dealer welcomed the humorous, light-weight dance-pop style of Europop in a pop music market saturated with mostly dour music, calling serious cuts such as "Your Clown" and "Now is Forever" the LP's weakest. Reviews from The Plain Dealer and Rolling Stone also appreciated its rejection of intellectual pretentiousness common in electronic music. On the other hand, the album was criticized for a lack of differentiation (in composition and production techniques) between songs, with Jose F. Promis writing its best moments came when it combined its template with different genres. In his review for Courier News, Tab Benoit called Eiffel 65 a "one-trick pony" for using the same vocal effect for all tracks. The album peaked at number four on the Billboard 200 in the United States, and the song "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100, impressive for an EDM song at the time of its release. In February 2000, the album was certified two-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of two million copies in the US. ==Track listing==

Credits adapted from the album's liner notes. The track numbers correspond to the US release. Eiffel 65 • Jeffrey Jey – vocals • Maurizio Lobina – keyboards, programming • Gabry Ponte – DJ, mixing Additional personnel • Angelica Villella – mixing (1, 2, 4–8, 10, 14) • Mauro Di Deco – mixing (3, 9, 11–13) • Chris Zippel – mastering • Massimo Gabutti – executive producer • Luciano Zucchet – executive producer == Charts ==

Weekly charts Year-end charts == Certifications ==