We've Finally Worked Out if "Good Life" is Better than "Big Fun"

So here we are: a week into the Trump-era. A whole new world awaits us, and it's either the start of a complete and total paradigm shift, or the beginning of four more years of the same old shit.

Now all that's done and dusted, and the Trump masks are loitering in the bargain bins of this once great and proud nation, we can get back to thinking about the bigger questions. Namely, which Inner City song is better—"Good Life" or "Big Fun."

It's a conundrum we've been pondering here at THUMP for years now, and we've decided to finally get to the bottom of it. Now, obviously, music isn't a competition, and we shouldn't ever really view it as such, but as Morrissey nearly put it, some songs are bigger than others. This pair of techno-pop masterpieces, lovingly crafted by Kevin Saunderson and Paris Grey, are two of the most recognisable club records ever committed to wax. They're timeless classics, tunes so elementally perfect that they're still tearing up dancefloors today. The only thing is….they sound pretty much identical. And that's why we've devised this foolproof, scientifically-approved system to determine which is the better song.

Before you don a pair of protective goggles and join us down in the lab, why not take a trip down memory lane and chug the tracks down right now. We say laboratory, but its more like a bloody-knuckled bear-pit. Let's fight!

Everyone knows that 99.99999% of the time, the lyrics to any dance record are going to be atrocious at best. Being a medium that relies primarily on percussive propulsion as a narrative force, a decent dance hook'd do well to shy away from sub-Dylanisms. People in clubs on drugs, don't want their drug taking and club going soundtracked by a second rate Bill Callahan impression, so it makes sense that the form's never really moved away from a variation on a slightly fucked theme. Saunderson and Grey, to their eternal credit, came up with a pair of records that make that theme sound like the most incredible thing in the world. Both are warm and inclusive odes to hedonism, paeans to the almost limitless pleasures that come with submitting oneself to the chance and coincidence of a night on the tiles. Both have utterly amazing opening lines ("Let me take you to a place I know you want to go/It's a good life," and "We don't really need a crowd to have a party /Just a funky beat, and you to get it started,") and the kind of hooks that are so alarmingly dunderheaded and thick that they transcend traditional shitness and reside in a blank realm of almost gnostic poetry ("Good life/Good life/Good life/Good life/Good life/In the good life/Good life" and "We're having big fun/And the party's just begun yeah, yeah yeah yeah/We're having big fun,") so it's a very tight race, but "Big Fun" pips it for including the line, "Let's get stoned into the pool." Doesn't that sound fun?

Winner: "Big Fun"

What's great about both records is that everyone in the world can take a decent stab at "singing" the juddering, staccato chord sequence they open with, largely because they're pretty much, well, note for note identical. While I'll readily, and happily, admit that I have a penchant for big blocky house and techno tracks that bounce atop of the kind of chord progressions that a four year old can smash out on a keyboard in twenty seconds or so, which means my judgement might be slightly clouded but fuck me, what a pair of wallopers we've got here. If you like your intros gargantuan, brash, and chunkier than Paul Potts after a lock-in at the Ginsters depot, you're in luck. It's "Big Fun" which narrowly wins this round on points, largely because of its sheer club-crushing heft.

Winner: "Big Fun"

Right, this is like being asked to pick between a lifetime's worth of free pizza, or a lifetime's worth of free lager. Despite the eventual gut-busting internal-expansion that'd follow receivership of either gift it'd be a treat beyond belief, to the point where having to choose would bring on a kind of paralysis of choice, only resolvable by the wearing of a blindfold. So we put our metaphorical blindfold on, threw "Big Fun" and "Good Life" into a metaphorical hat, and metaphorically picked a metaphorical winner out. That winner was "Good Life." Is there a comeback on the cards?

Winner: "Good Life"

One of these videos features both Kevin and Paris prancing around in London, looking for all the world like the most fun-loving tourists you've ever been stuck behind in the queue for the lift at Goodge Street tube station. The other is "Big Fun" which means we've got a draw going into the fifth and final round. Both sets of fans have gone a strange shade of green ahead of this sudden death scenario. There are huddles, hugs, and looks of blind panic.

Winner: "Good Life"

Dance music is, obviously, all about context, so we needed to explore just how these two songs worked on an audience. That audience was the VICE UK members of staff on a grubby Friday afternoon in mid-November, nearly all of whom looked like they were deep in a painful kind of contemplation. This'd wake 'em up out of their Trump-induced stupor, surely! The results were….well, muted to say the least. Whilst I'd not exactly envisioned a taps aff, pool party atmosphere to suddenly work its way through the room, I was a little surprised that playing two of the hugest records ever made recieved nary a nod of recognition from the hard at work hordes. I spotted someone grimace slightly at "Good Life" which meant we had a winner. "Big Fun" had reigned supreme.

Winner: "Big Fun"

Congratulations "Big Fun"! Look at this amazing prize you've won…what a beauty! Commiserations, of course, to "Good Life"—we still love you, honestly!

Now, that's that solved…onto the next one. The thing about the chicken versus egg argument is…

Josh is on Twitter