MANIAC 2000 WILL be available to stream for the first time ever, as the single celebrates its 25th anniversary. 

The single remained in the number one spot on the charts for ten consecutive weeks beginning 4 March 2000. It is the fifth-highest single in Ireland of all time. 

The song’s popularity overtook All Saints and Madonna, Backstreet Boys and blocked Westlife from getting their fifth consecutive number one. 

Mark McCabe, the artist behind Maniac 2000, was a DJ at Pulse in 1999. At the community-led Dublin pirate radio station, he frequently received song requests. Once he started playing Maniac 2000, landlines were jammed. He was 20 at the time. 

Speaking to The Journal.ie ten years ago on the 15th anniversary of the single, McCabe said when they recorded the song, there was a sense that the attitude was very much “let’s see what happens” – and what happened was a number one single.

He added that the success of a song was a “a crazy time” for McCabe, who remembers “doing signings in shops and being bundled into the back of a jeep to escape hordes of fans.”

The single was originally recorded at the Cricket Club in Clontarf. The song was a reworking of Soundcrowd Orchestra’s remix of 4 Rhythm’s Maniac, which itself heavily sampled the 1983 song Maniac from the movie Flashdance.

“It’s so badly produced and so badly recorded,” laughed McCabe in an interview 10 years ago. “It’s everything a record shouldn’t be; but it just goes to show that people like to forget where they are for seven minutes on a Friday night when they are out.”

McCabe, speaking for the 25th anniversary of the single, said “A song is a snapshot in time.” 

“It was our anthem,” he added. “It represented what we were all thinking and how we were enjoying our life at that time.”

The latest release was rerecorded with McCabe and vocalist Mimi Lane, and will be available to stream on Spotify and Apple Music beginning 2 May 2025.