Ride on Time

"Ride on Time" was written and produced by the Italian production team Groove Groove Melody, comprising Daniele Davoli, Mirko Limoni and Valerio Semplici. In New York City, Davoli bought a 12-inch a cappella copy of "Love Sensation", a 1980 single by Loleatta Holloway, planning to use it to create mashups. In Italy, he was introduced to samplers and persuaded the club where he worked to buy an Akai S900 sampler. He created the first version of "Ride on Time" using the S900 to sample the "Love Sensation" vocals. The basic backing track was finished in less than an hour, but it took weeks to finalise the ordering of the samples. ==Release==

Davoli tested "Ride on Time" in a club, but the audience responded poorly: "It was heartbreaking. The floor had 1,000 people dancing, and it cleared it." Dan Hartman, who wrote "Love Sensation", asked for a third of the royalties. Small was not told the purpose of the recording and recorded her vocals within an hour for a flat fee. However, Davoli said in 2018 that BMG had only paid Salsoul, the owner of the master. She also expressed frustration that Black Box were paid more for performances than her, even after she was billed as "the voice of Black Box". Davoli said he regretted not meeting Holloway before her death in 2011, and would have liked to apologise. Black Box bought the rights to the "Love Sensation" sample in 2018. ==Miming==

For their performance on the British music series Top of the Pops, Black Box hired the model Katrin Quinol to mime the vocals, as "none of us three blokes from Italy would be convincing replacements for Loleatta Holloway". Quinol also appeared in the music video and other performances. Davoli said, "You could tell those vocals didn't come from a slim girl like her. But she had a great influence on the public – she had the moves on stage and looked great and of the time." The miming drew criticism, which surprised the group, as it was normal on Italian television. Davoli said he regretted using Quinol: "It was wrong. But in Italy, a lot of people used to sing on a record and labels would ask young people to become the image ... We looked at American and English artists and realised they don't do that." The group allowed Quinol to perform in Europe under the Black Box name. ==Sales==

"Ride on Time" entered the UK singles chart at number 28 in the week of 12 August 1989. Boosted by demand for the import, it reached number one in its fifth week, on 3 September 1989. It topped the chart for six weeks and became the UK's bestselling single of 1989. Black Box were surprised by the success; Limoni said they had expected at best to sell 1,000 copies to be played in clubs. "Ride on Time" reached number one in Iceland and Ireland, number two in Sweden and Greece, and entered the top ten in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and West Germany. It reached number four on the Eurochart Hot 100, a chart based on the singles charts of 17 European countries. In Australia and New Zealand, "Ride on Time" reached number two. In the United States, it reached number 39 on the Dance Club Play chart. As of 2018, "Ride on Time" had been streamed over nine million times on Spotify. It is certified gold in Sweden, silver in France and platinum in Australia and the UK. ==Reception==

Phil Cheeseman of Record Mirror wrote that "Ride on Time" was "splendid and instantly catchy ... Black Box have understood perfectly the piano-driven rhythms of Chicago and moulded them into a Euro-shape. This is dance music's answer to SAW." Chris Heath from Smash Hits declared it "quite brilliant". Reviewing Dreamland for Melody Maker, Andrew Smith wrote that the sampled vocals of "Ride on Time" were irritating. In 1993, NME named "Ride on Time" the third-best "Euro-hit", describing it as the "ultimate Italian house shouter" and "quintessential Europop". In 1994, Peter Paphides and Simon Price from Melody Maker named "Ride on Time" a modern classic and acknowledged it as "the day Hi-NRG's influence on modern dance became official". The Daily Vault reviewer Michael R. Smith wrote in his 2009 review of Dreamland that he did not like "Ride on Time" when it became a hit, but now felt it was "effective and timeless" and that it sounded "fresher and fuller of life than ever". In 2010, Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger described "Ride on Time" as "a series of peaks, with the union of Right on time! and the piano riff the highest and most thrilling ... The trappings of Italo house – light, sequenced keyboard lines, bouncy bass, endless hi-hat all working in unison to give that gorgeous piano its lift – seemed to be on a hundred hits that summer, and the vocal hooks made this the biggest." In 2011, the journalist James Masterton wrote that Small's replacement vocal was "almost comically bad", with a noticeable Manchester accent. He lamented that Holloway was remembered for a track that did not feature her vocals on most copies. Mixmag included it in their 2019 list of the best "diva house tracks", writing that its "overall feel and wailing vocal accompaniment still bangs to this day and it is considered one of the first high-profile examples of italo house". In 2020, The Guardian named "Ride on Time" the 67th-greatest UK number one, writing: "Heather Small blows the house down ... This is a Terminator of a song, unstoppably delivering a payload of pure euphoria as Chicago house is spliced with Italo disco to create perfect pop." Accolades (*) indicates the list is unordered. ==Charts==

Weekly charts Year-end charts ==Certifications and sales==