The Singles Jukebox

Our runner-up for post image…

[Video]
[4.62]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Well, it does what it says on the tin: takes Loleatta Holloway’s vocals from the Ellis D “Dish Apella” and combines it with the beginning of “Male Stripper.” The build is enjoyable and it’s a decent length; I wouldn’t mind hearing it in a club. It’s harmless.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The original Man 2 Man version synthesized early Depeche Mode, hi-NRG, and gay sleaze hits like Paul Lekakis’ “Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)”; it’s dinky fun. “Dished” plays like a gloss on “Male Stripper,” a musical PowerPoint presentation, hence unsatisfying.
[5]

John Seroff: Generally not a great sign if you’re still waiting for the song to start after the beat drops. I’ll stick to the original.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: It’s the soundtrack to a 1990s Ministry of Sound commercial, being passed off as an actual song. Which it ain’t.
[0]

Tim de Reuse: The structure of late-nineties big beat, but coated in a glossy disco veneer with expensive 21st-century production. It’s bouncy and fun-sounding and catchy, but you don’t even get three minutes of it before the idea bucket runs empty.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Not so much brief and repetitive as it is ruthlessly efficient, this is pretty much a tutorial on how to somehow achieve a significant build and release when you only have less than 3 minutes to work with. More effective than plenty of similar tracks more than twice its length.
[7]

Iain Mew: There’s some skill and success in recognising the groove potential of taking the first 20 seconds of Man 2 Man Meet Man Parrish’s original and just letting it run and run. De-emphasising deep synths in favour of occasional disco string hits neuters it, though, and the incompatible vocal sample adds less than it distracts.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: In an era where everything’s revolutionary if it’ll get you clicks, the bowdlerisation of “Male Stripper” is a curiosity. Most likely, “Dished”‘s thematic erasure is just the standard byproduct of ripping off a banger, but it nevertheless parallels a commonplace deceleration in the boldness of mainstream media and acceleration in praise for it. It wouldn’t even be bold to make “Dished” about a trick-turning male stripper in 2018, not least because Man 2 Man did it years ago. More likely, such overt camp would be dismissed by the ever-shrinking number of gatekeepers, and it would get even less of a look-in. So while “Dished” is very fun, and in some ways even more amped-up than its forebear, it’s just not — and in fairness makes no claim to be — a troupe of men removing their “hot cop drag” on Top of the Pops, the same year that Thatcher warned that children are being “taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay”. Though maybe that’s not entirely bad.
[8]