David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray’s “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” Pays More Homage to A Night at the Roxbury Than Haddaway

As the latest in an increasingly long line (no nightclub pun intended) of songs that have seen fit to extract 90s dance hits for a twenty-first century “update” (though not necessarily improvement), “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” alludes to its origin source in the title. That is to say, Haddaway’s chorus in “What Is Love” that finishes such a weighty question with, “Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me/No more.” But, clearly, Haddaway was hurting enough financially to allow David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray to sample his song. Just as Alice Deejay likely was in order to allow Kim Petras and Nicki Minaj to decimate “Better Off Alone.” Unlike the latter duo, however, the trio of “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” saw fit to pay more direct and correlative homage to a song that soundtracked most of the 90s (apart from the Mentos jingle).

Originally released in 1993, the single became an archetype of the Eurodance genre that soon managed to warm the hearts of even the most tasteless and/or grunge-happy (an oxymoron, to be sure) Americans. Three years later, Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan would revive the track with their Saturday Night Live sketch, “The Roxbury Guys.” Playing Doug (Kattan) and Steve Butabi (Ferrell), the brothers’ signature was club-hopping from one L.A. hotspot to another as they struck out with women at every venue (via methods that would be decidedly non-#MeToo kosher today). Often joined by the host of the show, including Jim Carrey, Martin Short and Tom Hanks, the sketch proved popular enough to become fodder for the eighth movie based on an SNL sketch, A Night at the Roxbury (released in 1998). Regardless, the premise wasn’t really “meaty” enough to extend past the one-hour, twenty-two-minute mark. Even so, it left an indelible enough impression on the collaborators of “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” who open their video, directed by Hannah Lux Davis, in much the same way as A Night at the Roxbury: with splashy club scenes shot in a manner that comes across in a way Cher Horowitz would dub “Noxema commercial”-esque. And, on a side note, Clueless’ director, Amy Heckerling, did co-produce the movie (maybe that’s why both Dan Hedaya, Elisa Donovan and even Twink Kaplan are in it).

As for Doug and Steve, they don’t ever limit their evening to just one club (as Guetta, Anne-Marie and Leray do). This being something we see established when they commence at Billboard Live (before it became The Key Club) at 11:32 p.m., then head to the Mudd Club by 12:16 a.m. Striking out with the women there as well after a botched attempt to impress them with their story of encountering “Breakfast Clubber” Emilio Estevez, they head to the Roxbury, arriving by 1:24 a.m. (but first, they’re pulled over [by Jennifer Coolidge] for speeding while doing their head bobs to “What Is Love,” of course). As Ace of Base’s “Beautiful Life” plays during this scene, A Night at the Roxbury continues to immortalize what club culture in 90s L.A. consisted of. Mainly, waiting in line outside if you weren’t on the guest list. Hence, Doug’s insistence that once he and Steve open their own club, not only will they finally get in, but, “We’re also gonna treat all the outside wannabes just as well as any legendary television star.” Of course, such an egalitarian approach to clubbing wouldn’t take hold until now (when “elitism” in such a milieu has become all but impossible thanks to smartphones)—which is perhaps why Guetta, Anne-Marie and Leray have decided to use this moment to bring Haddaway and its place in A Night at the Roxbury back to the forefront.

Thus, the presence of Doug and Steve-emulative dance moves amid a boxing ring inexplicably appearing on the center of the dance floor as two women stand in their corners waiting to fight…or have a dance-off. But no, turns out, it’s to fight (after all, it speaks to the title of “Baby Don’t Hurt Me”). Meanwhile, Anne-Marie sings, “I want you for the dirty and clean/When you’re wakin’ in your dreams.” A lyric that harkens back to Doug saying, “You can take away our phones, you can take away our keys, but you cannot take away our dreams.” To which Steve adds, “That’s right, ‘cause we’re, like, sleeping when we have them.”  Their dream, as mentioned, is to open a nightclub. Something as ostensibly “inclusive” as what appears in the “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” video. And probably something as pain/pleasure-oriented, to boot. After all, the original “What Is Love” is drenched in the tone of a masochist who can’t quit a love that’s obviously emotionally damaging. So when Anne-Marie says, “When you bite my tongue and make me scream…/We are burnin’ at a high degree/And you make me feel like it burns/And it hurts/Maybe that’s part of the rush/This is us.”

The “This is us” of that hurt in A Night at the Roxbury is the growing pains that occur between Doug and Steve, as the latter starts to be more and more seduced by the normie life his overbearing father, Kamehl (Hedaya), wants for him. Complete with marrying Emily Sanderson (Molly Shannon), the daughter of the lighting store owner next door to Kamehl’s fake plant store. Because obviously their marriage would mean a lucrative business merger. But what does that matter to Steve, who really just wants to club all night like Doug?

With “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” the glory days that furnished being able to have such dreams are briefly glimpsed as, by the end of the video, everyone in the club is doing the signature Butabi brothers head bob to the beat that punctuated dance floors everywhere (without irony) in the mid-90s. In this sense, it’s hard to say if Haddaway owes a greater debt to A Night at the Roxbury or vice versa. Either way, the trio reviving the song here still sees the movie as being inextricably linked to it. One can’t exist without the other, apparently. That might be bad news for Haddaway, but it certainly helps revitalize the ever-dwindling collective memory of the John Fortenberry-directed film so often considered to be the perfect “hokey” pairing with Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (after all, it’s about two “daffy” dames whose lives are also built around clubbing in L.A.).

In the final scenes of “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” the fighters in the boxing ring have seemingly made peace while Guetta, Anne-Marie and Leray continue their head bobbing elsewhere: in the car. A vehicle that we’re made certain to clock as being a Lyft (thanks to strategic brand name placement). And if, somehow, they all happen to be Lyft drivers (or it’s just Leray, which somehow feels racist), it would be in keeping with the Butabi brothers’ way of life: “projecting” style only right before entering the club…while actually living at home with their parents and barely able to function in the daylight hours that solely condone “rational” behavior.