It’s one of the most iconic dance moves in the world — but it turns out Beyoncé might’ve gotten an assist on her infamous “booty shake” from an obscure 1990s British boy band.
Back in 1997, pop trio 911 — essentially the UK’s answer to The Backstreet Boys — performed their song “Bodyshakin’” on the same music show that Destiny’s Child were appearing on. And, according to one of the band members, Spike Dawbarn, Beyoncé absolutely loved their sexy dance moves and asked them to teach her.
“There’s something about that move,” said Dawbarn on new BBC documentary Boybands Forever. “We did a TV show with Destiny’s Child. We performed and we did Bodyshakin’ and Beyoncé was like, ‘show us that move! Keep doing it!’”
Even though, back then, Beyoncé wasn’t as huge a star as she is now, the boy band were more than happy to obey her orders. “Me and Jimmy were just stood there, doing the move because if Beyoncé asked you, you did it!” he recalled. “So when you watch Beyoncé videos doing the booty shake I’m like “ah, she robbed it!” We did it first!” (Well, there are only so many ways you can shake that booty, right?)
Like Beyoncé, the boy band were known for their ambitious dance moves. “Spike and Jimmy were fantastic dancers,” said “Bodyshakin” songwriter John McLaughlin on the same documentary. “It wasn’t even dancing, it was acrobatics. So I was like OK, let’s give them a song that’s a themed song. We wanted it to sound like a dance. A word that just sticks in your brain. When Bodyshakin’ came, I thought, ah that’s it!’
The catchy song reached No. 3 in the UK singles charts and also charted in Australia and New Zealand, but the band never launched in the US. The trio — Dawbarn, plus fellow dancer Jimmy Constable and heartthrob singer Lee Brennan — split in 1999 before reuniting several times in the 2010s, when they found huge success in southeast Asia, selling out venues in Malaysia in 2019 and collaborating with a Vietnamese pop act in 2023. They appear on Boybands Forever alongside stars from fellow 1990s British pop acts like Take That, Blue and 5ive, as well as Simon Cowell.
Meanwhile, Beyoncé has just been named Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century, having won 32 Grammys, 30 MTV Video Music Awards and 28 Billboard Music Awards since the 1990s.
