Mark McCabe on Maniac 2000: 'Nobody really knew what to make of it'

Extra.ie​

24-06-2025

2025 marks the silver jubilee of Ireland's unofficial national anthem – Mark McCabe's 'Maniac 2000' – The essential classic club track that every Irish person has shaken their booty to. Even if you think you haven't, trust me, you have.
For 25 years, the song has been blasted out at discos, clubs, pubs, weddings and sporting events – usually at night's end, summoning delirious dancers to the dance floor at every shindig, blowout and jamboree like a Pavlovian klaxon. Therefore, it is beyond bizarre that the song has never been available on streaming platforms… until now.
Spending 10 weeks at Number 1 in 2000, 'Maniac 2000' overtook All Saints, Madonna and Backstreet Boys while preventing Westlife from getting their fifth consecutive number one. It was a nationwide phenomenon. And what makes it more incredible is the fact that it was created with no budget and released on a tiny indie label.
A quarter of a century ago, the music industry landscape was completely different to what it is today. Napster was only in its infancy, streaming platforms such as Spotify were still light years away, and everyone bought CDs or cassettes. Such was the climate into which 'Maniac 2000' was released. It was an underdog, produced guerrilla style, at a time when grandiose production was in the ascendant.
Mark McCabe, an affable chap and great company, sets the scene.
'That time was very much Westlife at their peak,' he recalls. 'Well, maybe not at their peak, but they were the next thing after Take That and Boyzone. There was a lot of manufactured pop around, bands like Steps and S Club, stuff like that. It was all heavily controlled by the major record labels.'
However, there was also a vibrant rave culture. Across a hive of venues – The Asylum, Ormond Multimedia Centre, Temple of Sound, The Kitchen, Switch, RíRa, The Pod, Colombia Mills and Temple Theatre – Dublin was buzzing to the sound of the dance underground.
Mark occupied a sonic territory somewhere between those two polarities. He reflects on cutting his teeth at raves, such as Awesome and Obsession at the RDS.
'I just loved the atmosphere,' he enthuses. 'The lasers, the smoke machines, the lights and the show that they put on. I had been involved in doing my own little discos and stuff like that, but it was the scale of what they were doing that really appealed to me. And I liked the music. I liked the fact that it was not five guys playing instruments.
'It was one or two guys, and they were generating this music electronically. The Prodigy's 'Charly' was the first track that I ever bought. That was my awakening to it, because it sounded so different to everything else. And then there were things like Kicks Like A Mule's 'The Bouncer', which has this vocal hook, which is super simple, and that also appealed to me.'
McCabe became an avid listener to pirate station Pulse FM, which, pre-internet, along with Club FM, was where people discovered new dance tracks.
'Pulse appealed to me a little bit more,' Mark explains, 'because it was slightly more commercial. I got in touch with them and asked if I could come and see the studio, and went out to Clontarf. I got on really well with the guys that were running it, and they gave me a show. I ended up being the station manager and programming it.'
That shows some moxie. McCabe was still a teenager. On top of that, then, he created the fifth biggest selling Irish single of all time. His views on 'Maniac 2000' are not entirely what you might expect, however.
'My peers,' he explains, 'the Billy Scurrys, the Johnny Moys and all of those people, it just wouldn't have been their thing. This was my first dance release. All my heroes, the guys whose tunes I had grown up listening to, and who I worked for in the Ormond Multimedia Centre, doing sound, they were going, 'What the heck is this?' So I was embarrassed.
'Nobody really knew what to make of it. I think as a result of that, there was no chance of me having a credible DJ career or being respected in that scene, even though I managed to get signed to Danny Tenaglia's label, Twisted, which was super-cool. So, on one side I was doing cool, incredible things, but then on the other, I was the guy that did this 'Maniac' track.'
The origins of 'Maniac 2000' emerged in the early '80s via Michael Sembello of Flashdance soundtrack fame. Fast forward to 1995 when Irish act 4 Rhythm released their own version of the song, which spawned a remix by Irish duo Sound Crowd, McCabe, like many other Dublin DJs at the time (including co-writer Al Gibbs), was drawn to the 'Maniac' instrumental and, as a party piece, would throw different raps over it.
'The first version, the demo, was aired on Pulse FM from a gig that was in the Temple Theatre,' says Mark. 'And that's how people got to know it. It was literally, on the night we hit record, whatever came out of my mouth – that was it. Then we started playing it on Pulse, and that's the version that stuck. We went back and recorded it in the Clontarf Cricket Club at an under-18 gig, and that was the final version.'
Initially, the popularity of the track was gauged by the number of people phoning in to Pulse FM.'People just kept on requesting it,' Mark smiles, 'and then they went into Billy Murray at Abbey Discs, and said, 'Can we buy this?' So I signed to him. It went in at No.2 for the first week and then spent 10 weeks at No.1.'
'Maniac 2000' took on a life of its own. But it was not the door-opener it should have been for Mark…
'There was a side of me,' Mark explains, 'that was going, 'Okay, I want to be a superstar DJ. I want to be one of those cool DJs'. So, on one side I had 'Maniac', and then on the other, I was doing shows on 2FM, playing new trance or tribal house. And at that time, it didn't make sense for 'Maniac' to fit with that. It was just so different, so that's where I really struggled.
'Obviously, the 'Maniac' people were far outnumbering the 2FM audience at the shows. I think I did it for about four or five years, and then I thought, 'It's just not for me, it doesn't make sense'. I found it really difficult to go and do shows, because I was thinking, 'Oh man, I've got to do 'Maniac'. It's not going to make sense, playing all these tunes and then suddenly going into 'Maniac'.
'I went to work for RTÉ and had my own studio where I started to record bands, orchestras, choirs, you name it. So, I got back to doing the technical side of things. Then I got the opportunity to set up the RTÉ digital station. I brought Pulse with me, and we set up 2XM, which was the indie station.' Mark McCabe. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com
And that was that, until McCabe unleashed 'Maniac 2000' once again at Electric Picnic 2015, and the crowd went insane.
'I really didn't expect anything at all,' Mark laughs. 'It turned out to be this sort of awakening, where I got to see it for what it was – it was just people really enjoying it. They were having a good time with it and I felt it was my duty to give people what they want! Now it makes sense. I can play a show and everything works together.
'A lot of dance music now is reworks of stuff from the '90s and noughties. Playing the Picnic last year, there were people from 13 to 60, and the younger kids knew a lot of the reworks. And then the older people obviously knew the original. Now it's nothing but joy, it's so much fun.'
'Maniac 2000', the underdog with the heart of a lion, is relishing its second act, with McCabe playing massive gigs and even selling out the 3Arena in March of this year.
'People were showing up for the fact that it was 25 years of 'Maniac',' he notes. 'So it was very personal, because I knew that everybody there had an appreciation for 'Maniac 2000'. That was really special.'
• The 25th anniversary edition of 'Maniac 2000' is streaming now on all platforms.