Billy Ray Cyrus and Ricky Martin Pop's Greatest Dance Crazes

Hello, I'm TV's Robert Webb, and tonight I'm going to tantalise you

with just a few of pop's greatest dance crazes.

Our next dance craze was spawned by Miley Cyrus' dad, of all people.

Turns out he's actually a musician,

and his 1992 track Achy Breaky Heart

brought line dancing into the big time.

The song was written by Don Von Tress, a man who, interestingly

shares his initials with the medical condition deep vein thrombosis.

Yes, it's the dance sensation of the summer, the Achy Breaky!

Billy Ray Cyrus, for me, is like the worst of what America can offer us.

He's got his mullet on the go.

It's sort of like a perm and mullet convention in the video.

Horrendous, horrendous.

But if you could master a grape vine and rock your hips three times,

you could do the Achy Breaky, and the routine was most infectious.

Not infectious in a good way,

I mean infectious like conjunctivitis or scabies.

And my God, it was catchy!

You'd be in a club and then people would start

to hurriedly organise lines.

It's like, "No, no, stop it."

The shoulders are going and all doing this sort of stuff.

That was the mother of all dance crazes, really,

the whole line dancing thing.

Somebody just called it the Cyrus Virus and now everywhere I play

people show up with big posters and banners that say, "We've got the Cyrus Virus."

Billy Ray Cyrus inflicted upon the world an appreciation of line dancing

-that by rights it should never have had.

-Thanks, Billy.

Hi, guys, you can't smell me, but I absolutely stink.

While I was lifting some really,

really heavy weights, I looked around and saw a lot of people in

pain and very few people having fun, and that's the way it should be when exercise is concerned.

But try telling that to these crazy geniuses who are in at number 41.

They won't listen.

I'm joking.

The speed and the strength of this treadmill can be varied to simulate

the physical demands while walking on ascending gradient.

I don't know anybody who didn't see that video who just, like,

watched the whole thing like this.

# All you guys are second saddle to the rest

# And you leave me with my jaw on the floor... #

These are the gymtastic moves for OK Go's Here It Goes Again,

better known as the treadmill song.

-I think they did it in one take.

-Yeah.

Which is pretty impressive.

It only works because it's done in one take.

These guys have to have reversed it so that you genuinely feel you're watching a spectacle.

Feel free to try this at home, once you've bought eight treadmills.

It's not really a dance that you can do in a nightclub, like, "Oh,

hello, mate, come in the nightclub, coat, thank you very much."

"What's this?"

"It's a treadmill."

"What are you doing with a treadmill?!" "I'm hoping you're going to play that song."

Just set up the treadmill...!

# Just when you think you've got to go

# Just when you get on a roll

# Here it goes, here it goes here it goes again... #

The song isn't amazing, but once you've seen the video,

you've got the video in your head, and therefore the song's brilliant.

Whether you know him as Ricky, Rick, Richard or just plain Dick, chances

are Ricky Martin is your favourite grinning Puerto Rican narcissist.

-# She's into superstition... #

-Mine too!

And this is his first English single, Livin' La Vida Loca,

a Spanish phrase which roughly translates as,

your grandmother smells of donkeys.

I know, I was shocked and outraged, too.

# Like a bullet to your brain, come on!

Upside, inside out, your grandmother smells of donkeys.

# She'll push and pull you down

# Livin' la vida loca... #

Let's just forget the fact that he's gorgeous

and can shake his bomba like nobody else,

but he's got this captivating energy.

# Livin' la vida loca Livin' la vida loca... #

You know, Ricky Martin has a great way of working the camera, and he

can do the smallest of dance moves and it will just be so effective.

When he's on stage, he has this fire, it's just like magnetic.

It gets everybody on their feet.

Ricky's Latin dance craze was Puerto Rican's biggest export since... well, ever!

And no wonder. As you're about to see, la vida loca

is the perfect way to seduce a woman.

Or repair a dislocated hip.

Oh, yeah, we all love a bit of Latin, don't we?

Especially because the men usually wear

very tight trousers and shake their bum a lot.

It's a little bit of a loosey-goosey shake.

It was loosey. The whole body shakes.

The butt shakes and the hands just flap around.

It just makes you want to leave your drink

and get up on the dance floor and actually do something.

It's commercialised, dumbed down a little bit. It makes it a bit

lighter, which I suppose is the best thing, because then everyone

can join in so everyone's going to like it.

Very clever, Ricky. Very clever...

At number 39, it's Don't Cha, or in English "Don't you."

Originally performed by the super-sexy Pussycat Dolls,

it's more commonly performed

now by the drunkest girl in whatever club you happen to be in.

Some people say that it's a basically unpleasant song which

objectifies women, but I'm prepared to overlook this,

because the girls in it have such nice bottoms.

Come on, girls!

# Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?

# Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me? #

Don't Cha!

I think when it came out, people were like,

"God, who do these girls think they are?"

Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me? They're hot!

A lot of people were saying, "How arrogant's that?!"

But they were right.

# Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?

-# Don't cha!

-Don't cha! #

This song's for all of our girls out there, let me hear you scream!

The idea that Don't Cha was for the sisters,

which I think is the nonsense that came out with

after people raised an eyebrow about this woman-hating track...

If they want to call that feminism, then, erm...

I'm more than happy to ignore them.

It was cheeky, you know what I mean?

It's not serious, you know, it was all in fun.

# Loosen up my buttons, baby... #

The Pussycat Dolls were formed in 1995 as a burlesque dance troupe

performing at the Viper Room nightclub in LA.

Back in the day, we were straight burlesque.

People had always seen burlesque as a sort of striptease,

and although we say we were burlesque, we never stripped.

We stripped layers of corsets down to another corset,

and down to another bra, there were layers and layers of things, but there was no nudity involved.

We have a Pussycat Doll leg, and sometimes I take it beyond.

But even if you can't get your legs behind your ears, you could enrol

in a class to learn how to flaunt your inner doll through dance.

I definitely think Pussycat Dolls

helped bring back burlesque in a new-age,

millennium way. It was, you know, a global phenomenon

which we could have never anticipated.

I have got an inner doll directly in correspondence with how much gin

I have, and then inner doll comes out of me and does all weird dance moves

that aren't seen at any other time.