Those longing for the glory days of ’90s club music are in luck: Real McCoy are back.
The pop group, which had mainstream hits like “Another Night” and “Run Away” in the Last Great Decade, have recently reformed with original vocalists Olaf “O-Jay” Jeglitza and Karin Kasar, reports Idolator. After some warm-ups at Poland’s Love Message Festival (with Black Box!) and a club date in Finland, they’ll play their first stateside shows next month, at New York’s Melrose Ballroom on November 4 and the next night at Stereo Nightclub in Chicago.
Kasar was Real McCoy’s original vocalist, and the one heard on their biggest hits. But music industry bullshit placed her behind the scenes, and as Idolator notes, “[f]emale Real McCoy members were subsequently added to publicly front the act at the time… As O-Jay explained to us two years ago, the decision to keep Kasar out of the picture came down to the record label and the producers.”
But now they are back, and Kasar and Jeglitza are front and center on this new revival.
“Karin and I started working together again in 2014. Back then she did backing vocals for a German Artist called EO,” Jeglitza says. “We’ve talked a lot about doing shows together since then, but it took more than two years and a phone call from my friend Tony Cottura to actually put us back on stage for real. We reorganized a couple of things in our private lives and hooked up with long-time friend and producer Marvin Gate in order to create a show that contains the essence of Real McCoy, including Karin and O-Jay.”
Real McCoy’s last album, One More Time, dropped in 1997, but the pair have not ruled out new music in the near future. In the meantime, it’s all about revisiting the past. “People are coming mostly to listen to those songs and sing along because they were strong enough to become classics for them,” adds Jeglitza. “A lot of people connect memories, good or sad, with these songs, including myself.”