Reaction
While the music-buying public of the UK embraced the single, taking it to the number-one spot within three weeks of its release, the music press was strongly negative. Melody Maker described it as "pure, unadulterated agony ... excruciating"; Sounds reasoned that it was "a record so noxious that a top ten place can be its only destiny", calling it a "rancid reworking of ancient discs". The record also reached number two in Australia and Norway. Select magazine later reported that "Doctorin' the Tardis" sold over a million copies.
In a retrospective look at novelty records and a defence of the genre, Peter Paphides wrote in The Observer's music monthly that "the one novelty record most people admit to liking is 'Doctorin' The Tardis' by The Timelords... The reason for this, presumably, is that it's nice to be in on the same joke as arch pop ironist Bill Drummond. Fine, but let's not forget that if The KLF weren't passionate about how brilliantly dumb pop can be they wouldn't have got to Number One." The "reason we purport to hate novelty records", he argued, "is because we continue to romanticise the creative process. We feel that our intelligence is insulted by novelty."
A 1994 piece in The Guardian called "Doctorin'" a "piss-take". "It was a triumph for Trash Art and it spent exactly one week at the top of the chart. Perfect."
Read more about this topic: Doctorin' The Tardis
Famous quotes containing the word reaction:
“An actor must communicate his author’s given message—comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.”
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“Christianity was only a very strong and singularly well-timed Salvation Army movement that happened to receive help from an unusual and highly dramatic incident. It was a Puritan reaction in an age when, no doubt, a Puritan reaction was much wanted; but like all sudden violent reactions, it soon wanted reacting against.”
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“The excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)