"Pretty Green Eyes" is a song originally written and recorded by Force & Styles featuring Junior. A remixed version appeared on their debut album All Over the UK and the song was released as a 12-inch single in 1997. The song achieved mainstream popularity in 2003 when it was covered by Ultrabeat and peaked at No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart.
The Force & Styles version was a happy hardcore song which features the vocals of Junior, and was played at Simon and Kerry's wedding – Simon being an MC who had previously performed with Force & Styles when they DJ'd at various hardcore club nights. The song was produced by Force & Styles and recorded with Junior at their own 'UK Dance Studios', in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex in 1996. It first appeared on hardcore compilation albums, and in 1997 it was released on 12" vinyl on Force & Styles's own record label UK Dance Records, with a b-side "Apollo 13 ". The vinyl was also re-released in 2001. This hardcore version, although popular among hardcore listeners, never achieved the same mainstream success as the Ultrabeat cover. After the death of Junior on 31 December 2011, an online campaign to get the original, hardcore version into the charts was started called "Let's get Junior - Pretty Green Eyes to #1".
's members had all been fans of happy hardcore since 1997 and when they decided to record a song, they chose to cover the old Force & Styles song "Pretty Green Eyes". The group used a recording studio in Liverpool where Mike Di Scala was the engineer, and they first recorded the song there, with Mike singing. During the recording session, they did not have a pop filter for the microphone, so they had to use a sock instead. The song was signed by All Around the World because of Di Scala's last single for the label under the Rezonance Q alias. "Someday", a cover of the Mariah Carey song, had achieved a peak of No. 29 in the charts and when Di Scala was discussing its success with All Around the World, he played them Ultrabeat's demo of "Pretty Green Eyes". The whistle noise at the start of the song is sampled from House Traffic's 1994 hit "Every Day of My Life".
Chart performance
The song became more popular when it was released on promos and Clubland III and played more in nightclubs. It was released as a single in August 2003. It entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 2, behind "Breathe" by Blu Cantrell, and stayed in the chart for 15 weeks. This led to Ultrabeat performing on Top of the Pops and a lock-out signing in the HMV store in Liverpool.
Music video
The video was filmed in London and features three young women who are dancers in a strip club. They are putting on their make-up and outfits, then they dance in the strip club, then the video switches to a nightclub, and back between the two. Ultrabeat also appear in the video. They are sitting down on chairs in the strip club and they are also DJing at the nightclub. The video makes use of green lighting and green clothes, and switches between locations after zooming in on one of the girl's green eyes. The original video for "Pretty Green Eyes" was actually a casino scene filmed at the Baby Blue Bar on the Albert Dock in Liverpool, but was not used as the actual music video. The scene depicts a gorgeous girl with green eyes gambling on the dice table. The dice dealer, Bill Pettrey, was the Deputy General Manager of Leo Casino, one of Liverpool's top night spots on Queen's Dock.
