o snap!

First released on this day in 1990, the dance hit “[I’ve got] The Power” by Frankfurt-based creative collective Snap! quickly climbed the charts to reach highs of number two in Germany and the US and number one in the UK, Canada, Greece, Spain, Zimbabwe, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Their third collaboration on a single, it was composed by Michael Münzing with Luca Anzilotti to showcase the vocal talents of rapper Turbo B and Penny Ford—with back-up from Jackie Harris.
First hearing the song I am confident that I did not know that the singers were German much less how my brain processed the enigmatic and dissonant (but I suppose also easily elided over) opening lyrics: “Американская фирма Transceptor Technologies приступила к производству компьютеров ‘Персонaльный спутник,’” meaning the American firm Transceptor Technologies has begun the production of the Personal Companion computer—referring to a company then recently founded in Ann Arbor Michigan that specialised in accessibility options for the visually impaired and distributed a voice-controlled console that downloaded editions of the USA Today newspaper and would read out selected articles. A strange segue but I suppose those sort of accommodations and interventions are in the spirit of enfranchisement and empowerment celebrated in the verses and bars to follow.