Product Code Database
" Rock DJ" is a song by English singer and songwriter Robbie Williams, featured on his third studio album, Sing When You're Winning (2000). The song was released on 31 July 2000 as the lead single from the album. It samples Barry White song "It's Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me", "Can I Kick It?" by A Tribe Called Quest and has a quote from "La Di Da Di" by Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh. In his 2023 Netflix series, Williams jokingly stated that he was trying to write "Karma Police" and ended up writing "Karma Chameleon".
"Rock DJ" reached number one in Costa Rica, Estonia, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom whilst reaching the top 10 in 16 other countries. It was the fourth-best-selling song of 2000 in the UK. In the United States, it peaked at number 24 on the Billboard Dance Club Play chart. The music video features Williams trying to impress a female DJ by stripping naked and eventually resorting to removing his skin and muscles, ending up as a skeleton. The song won British Single of the Year, and the video won British Video of the Year at the 2001 Brit Awards.
The video's ending (beginning with Williams taking off his skin) was cut by most music channels around Europe, including VIVA, MCM, The Box and VH1 Europe. However, in the recent years, some of the music channels in Europe (including MTV Classic and VH1 Europe) airs the "studio recording" version of the music video, even on late night, which made the edited version of the music video fall into obscurity. Examples of TV stations that still play the full video are Bulgarian channel MM, former German located channel B.TV (often in daytime) and Canadian channel MusiquePlus, some channels ran the edited video during the day and the unedited one overnight, while The Hits played a version which cut from Williams dancing in his underwear to dancing as a skeleton, filling the gap by repeating previous footage. This is the version that is currently played on channels owned by The Box Plus Network. In 2001, "Rock DJ" won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Special Effects. In 2006, it was voted by viewers as the seventh Most Groundbreaking Video Ever on MTV and in 2007 it was ranked at number 48 on MuchMusic's 50 Most Controversial Videos. The video was banned in Dominican Republic due to allegations of Satanism.
The video has been shown numerous times on Fuse's Pants-Off Dance-Off, despite its gory content. Toward the end of the dancer's dancing/stripping to it when the video is shown in the background like any other, they only show Williams, briefly, ripping and throwing his skin, and dancing in muscle form before cutting to the hostess of the show. The video appears as an instance of the re-use of the motif of "dancing with the dead" in a book about medieval images of death and dying in art and literature.
A 'video single' "Rock DJ", containing the music video and a making-of documentary, was released on VHS on 11 September 2000 and DVD on 16 September. The DVD was intended to be released concurrently with the VHS, but was pulled because copies lacked the '15' certification from the British Board of Film Classification due to a printing error, and needed replacing with the new 15-rated copies. The music video also carried a 15 certificate warning when uploaded to Williams' official website. As of March 2001, "Rock DJ" was the biggest-selling music DVD in the United Kingdom to date, selling over 64,000 copies on what was then still a nascent format.
A second video shows Williams in a studio while recording the song.
Studios
Personnel
| 25 September 2000 | ||
| 17 October 2000 | Rhythmic contemporary radio |
|
|
