Rednex

Rednex are a Swedish musical group formed in the early 1990s, built around a deliberately exaggerated country-and-hillbilly image paired with Eurodance production. The lineup performed under stage names such as Mary Joe, Bobby Sue, Ken Tacky, Billy Ray and Mup, presenting themselves as an American backwoods family even though the project was conceived and produced in Sweden.

The group became a global phenomenon with their 1994 single «Cotton Eye Joe», a hyperactive dance reworking of the traditional American folk song, which topped charts across Europe and became a fixture of pop culture, sporting events and, decades later, internet meme culture through the «Gegagedigedagedago» viral edit. Follow-up hits «Old Pop in an Oak», «Wish You Were Here» and «The Spirit of the Hawk» continued the same formula of banjo riffs, fiddle samples and thumping dance beats.

Rednex occupy a unique niche at the intersection of novelty pop, Eurodance and country pastiche, and their catalogue has enjoyed a long afterlife thanks to viral remixes and covers, cementing «Cotton Eye Joe» as one of the most recognizable dance-pop songs of the 1990s.