Track eight on Fatboy Slim's album Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars.

This song is notable for the fact that the Spike Jonze-directed music video stars a tap dancing 58-year old Christopher Walken.

Walken was quite a tap dancer back in the day, and he had told Spike that he wanted to get some of his mad tap dancing skills recorded on video before it was too late, as it were. Spike, meanwhile, had been talking to Norman about doing another music video (after their previous collaboration, Praise You). They had planned on doing Star 69 (also from Halfway), but because of its abrasive lyrics it turned out that this would have been unacceptable for a US release (not to mention probably more difficult to convince Walken to tap dance to). Instead, they chose to do Weapon of Choice together. The finished video features Walken tap dancing around in an empty hotel lobby, and even briefly flying around on wires as well.

Another interesting fact about this song is that it sports a vocal sample featuring the voice of Bootsy Collins, with a play on words of the phrase "you could go with this, or you could go with that".

In my mind, however, this song is most notable for its vocal samples which seem to refer to Frank Herbert's Dune universe. The most obvious example of this is the verse which details the Fremen method of traversing the desert:

walk without rhythm, it won't attract the worm
walk without rhythm, and it won't attract the worm
walk without rhythm, and it won't attract the worm
if you walk without rhythm; ah, you never learn
Of course, there are other samples which elicit the Bene Gesserit power of commanding voice:
don't be shocked by the tone of my voice
check out my new weapon, weapon of choice

listen to the sound of my voice
you can check it all out, it's the weapon of choice

Further on in the song, the vocals start to turn towards later installments of the Dune series, covering such topics as Leto II's transmogrification, his breeding program which created Siona Atreides, and possibly even his relationship with Hwi Noree:
organically grown, through the hemisphere our own
to make love to the angels of life, yeah... and my girl;
although she just don't understand, it's gone beyond bein' a man
as I drift off into the night, I'm in flight...

she's a forest gal no doubt, but I'm gonna hold my cool *
cause the music rules... yeah, so groove on girl... cheyah
halfway between the gutter and the stars, yeah
halfway between the gutter and the stars, yeah

As one would expect, the music video version of this song differs slightly from the CD version. The CD version is (5:45) in duration and has more bass-heavy sample editing, whereas the music video version is (3:44), has fewer instrumental sections, *one less verse sample, and overall more natural-sounding voice samples (which somehow come off sounding more sinister, in comparison to the CD version).

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.