Ideas. Stories. Community.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Donate during KSJD's Spring Fund Drive and you could win a Super73 E-Bike! Click here to donate NOW.

The Apache Relay, 'Katie Queen Of Tennessee'

The Apache Relay's "Katie Queen of Tennessee" is easily one of the catchiest tunes I've heard this year. And in the song's new video, a troupe of 40 young dancers raise the fun to heights I hadn't imagined with a blissfully, perfectly choreographed routine.

Then I discovered this: These kids, from the Nashville Dance Center, aren't dancing to the music of The Apache Relay at all, but a medley of hair metal songs. The story goes something like this: When director Hayley Young was thinking of how to make a video for the song, she wanted dancers from Nashville to be part of the act. A search online brought her to a routine by the Nashville Dance Center set to music from the musical Rock of Ages. She turned the hair metal down, cranked up the tune from Apache Relay's new self-titled album and — like The Wizard of Oz meeting Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon for the first time — discovers a match that was simply meant to be.

Hayley Young figured that all she needed was a big space, and she found one. Turns out married singers Amy Grant and Vince Gill are connected to the Nashville Dance Center, and they loaned the group their 18th-century barn for filming. Surrounded by dancers, the band set up and played "Katie Queen of Tennessee" on a makeshift stage while a boom box simultaneously played the metal medley. The result is unforgettable.

If you want to see how perfectly the original routine syncs up with both hair metal and The Apache Relay, we've put the two videos side by side. It's eerie.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

In 1988, a determined Bob Boilen started showing up on NPR's doorstep every day, looking for a way to contribute his skills in music and broadcasting to the network. His persistence paid off, and within a few weeks he was hired, on a temporary basis, to work for All Things Considered. Less than a year later, Boilen was directing the show and continued to do so for the next 18 years.