Whoomp! (There It Is)

"Whoomp! (There It Is)" is a song by the Miami bass group Tag Team. The song reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in 1993.[1] The song has since become a staple of sporting events. Tag Team tried to prolong the success of "Whoomp! (There It Is)" with Addams Family and Disney versions, but none of those cracked the Top 40 and the group is considered a one-hit wonder.

Not to be confused with Whoot, There It Is.
"Whoomp! (There It Is)"
Single by Tag Team
from the album Whoomp! (There It Is)
ReleasedMay 7, 1993
Recorded1992
GenreMiami bass
Length3:56
LabelLife Records
Songwriter(s)Stephen Gibson and Cecil Glenn (Tag Team)
Producer(s)Tag Team
Tag Team singles chronology
"Whoomp! (There It Is)"
(1993)		 "U Go Girl"
(1995)

Background

The song sampled a beginning synthesizer line from the 1980 Italo disco hit "I'm Ready" by Kano. The chorus is almost the same as the song "Whoot, There It Is" released by fellow Miami-based 95 South a month earlier, but the verse lyrics are very different. Both songs charted on the Billboard chart at the same time, but "Whoot, There It Is" peaked at #11 and "Whoomp! (There It Is)" peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Members of 95 South claim that Tag Team copied their work. "Whoot, There It Is" was released in March 1993, two months before "Whoomp! (There It Is)". Both singles were recorded in Atlanta. Tag Team member DC claimed that the phrase, 'Whoomp! There It Is' was coined by strippers from Florida working in Atlanta. DC was a DJ at an adult entertainment establishment in Georgia during that time. 95 South, however, were Miami-based, which led most to believe DC was either simply lying and knew about the track, or he was actually unaware that the phrase the Florida strippers were repeating in Georgia was from an already-released track. It seemed highly unlikely, if not impossible, for a professional DJ to be unaware of such a widely-played track, especially considering that the Florida strippers he DJed for requested their own music to dance to.[2]

Critical reception

"Whoomp! (There It Is)" was rated #97 in VH1's 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders. The song listed at #58 on "Billboard's Greatest Songs of all time".[3]

Music video

The video for the song features a large outdoor party. It was filmed at an Atlanta fairground. Extras were recruited by word-of-mouth and also by an announcement on a local radio station. More than a thousand extras showed up for the shoot. [4]

Addams Family Remix

Within a year of the release of "Whoomp! (There It Is)", Tag Team remixed the backing music with a version of the theme song from the original Addams Family television series to create the song "Addams Family (Whoomp!)" for the film Addams Family Values. Actors Christina Ricci and Jimmy Workman reprised their film roles as Wednesday Addams and Pugsley Addams (respectively) for the song's music video. This version appears as the closing track on the soundtrack album Addams Family Values: Music from the Motion Picture. "Addams Family (Whoomp!)" won the 1994 Razzie Award (Worst Original Song) for its writers (Ralph Sall, Stephen Gibson and Cecil Glenn).[5]

Chart performance

The hit song spent one week at #1 on the US R&B chart in 1993. On the Hot 100 chart dated July 10, "Whoomp! (There It Is)" reached a new peak at number two, sandwiched between Janet Jackson's "That's the Way Love Goes" above and UB40's "Can't Help Falling in Love" beneath - all three songs ended up next to each other at the Year-End edition of the chart, occupying exactly the same positions, albeit in slightly different orders. It eventually spent seven weeks at #2 in September through October, 1993[6] on the Billboard Hot 100, but was kept out of the top slot by "Can't Help Falling in Love" and Mariah Carey's "Dreamlover". The single is certified 4× Platinum in the US for shipments of over 4,000,000 copies and, despite never reaching number one on the pop chart, the song spent 24 non-consecutive weeks in the top ten becoming the longest running top ten song of all time until Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart” spent a week longer in 1997. It was ranked the second biggest song of 1993, behind Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You". It has sold over 3.5 million copies in the United States.[7]

Charts

See also
  • R&B number-one hits of 1993 (USA)

References
  1. Billboard - Google Books. Books.google.com. 1995-09-04. Retrieved 2011-03-29.
  2. "Whoomp! There It Is by Tag Team". Songfacts.
  3. "Billboard Hot 100 Chart 50th Anniversary". Billboard.com. Retrieved 2011-03-29.
  4. Christina Silva (June 8, 2010). "Whoomp! There he ain't! - No, that's not Obama in video". Politifact. Retrieved July 15, 2011.
  5. "Awards for Ralph Sall". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2013-08-10.
  6. "Top 100 Music Hits, Top 100 Music Charts, Top 100 Songs & The Hot 100". Billboard.com. Retrieved 2011-10-04.
  7. Sandiford-Waller, Theda (November 9, 1996). "Hot 100 Singles Spotlight". Billboard. BPI Communications Inc. 108 (45): 83. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved February 26, 2015.
  8. "Australian-charts.com – Tag Team – Whoomp! (There It Is)". ARIA Top 50 Singles. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  9. "Austriancharts.at – Tag Team – Whoomp! (There It Is)" (in German). Ö3 Austria Top 40. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  10. "Musicline.de – Tag Team Single-Chartverfolgung" (in German). Media Control Charts. PhonoNet GmbH. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  11. "Nederlandse Top 40 – week 11, 1994" (in Dutch). Dutch Top 40 Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  12. "Dutchcharts.nl – Tag Team – Whoomp! (There It Is)" (in Dutch). Single Top 100. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  13. "Charts.nz – Tag Team – Whoomp! (There It Is)". Top 40 Singles. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  14. "Swedishcharts.com – Tag Team – Whoomp! (There It Is)". Singles Top 100. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  15. "Swisscharts.com – Tag Team – Whoomp! (There It Is)". Swiss Singles Chart. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  16. "Official Singles Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  17. "1993: Year-End USA Charts (Singles)". Billboard.com. Retrieved 2010-07-31. (archived by Top40-Charts.com)
  18. "The ARIA Australian Top 100 Singles 1994". Australian Record Industry Association Ltd. Archived from the original on 2015-10-25. Retrieved 2015-11-02.
  19. "Top 100-Jaaroverzicht van 1994". Dutch Top 40. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  20. "Jaaroverzichten – Single 1994". dutchcharts.nl. Retrieved May 2, 2020.
  21. "End of Year Charts 1994". Recorded Music NZ. Retrieved December 3, 2017.
  22. "Billboard Top 100 - 1994". Retrieved 2010-08-27.
  23. Geoff Mayfield (December 25, 1999). 1999 The Year in Music Totally '90s: Diary of a Decade - The listing of Top Pop Albums of the '90s & Hot 100 Singles of the '90s. Billboard. Retrieved October 15, 2010.
  24. "Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Singles: Page 1". Billboard. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved 1 August 2018.
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