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:
“In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.”
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“The excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction.”
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