This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2005 Week continues here with a look at the unusual (and decades-spanning) path “Everytime We Touch” took to becoming a college basketball marching band jock jam.
What’s the connection between ‘80s Scottish folk singer-songwriter Maggie Reilly and Duke University athletics? Cascada’s 2005 Eurodance smash hit, “Everytime We Touch.”
20 years ago, German dance music group Cascada – then comprised of frontwoman Natalie Horler and producer-composers DJ Manian and DJ Yanou – found international success with “Everytime We Touch,” an advance single from their 2006 debut album of the same name.
Before “Everytime,” Cascada scored European hits with “Bad Boy” and “Miracle,” the latter of which earned them a deal with American dance label Robbins Entertainment. After the U.S. release of “Miracle” failed to move the needle, the trio launched “Everytime We Touch” in August 2005. With American airwaves still dominated by sleek R&B/hip-hop fusions, pop-rock crowd-pleasers and Caribbean-flavored riddims, Robbins understood that breaking a Eurodance act in the U.S. would take some time. In fact, just two months before they released “Everytime,” Robbins earned a Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit with Belgian dance group DHT’s cover of Roxette’s “Listen to Your Heart,” which they dropped back in 2003.
As “Everytime” slowly gained traction across dance music clubs and radio stations, the song debuted on the Hot 100 at No. 86 for the week dated Dec. 17, 2005. Curiously, America was the first country to embrace “Everytime” despite its Eurodance foundation being at complete odds with top 40’s dominant sounds at the time. To this day, Horler is still shocked at that initial reception.
“I know that ‘Everytime We Touch’ was quite out there for that time, especially in the States. Dance music just was not played on the radio much back then and generally wasn’t accepted as commercial music,” she tells Billboard. “Travelling to New York for the first time and getting into a cab — I think it was Z100 or KTU – and [hearing the song play] was quite an insane experience.”
By March 2006, the song reached its Hot 100 peak of No. 10, still Cascada’s best showing on Billboard’s marquee singles chart. According to Luminate, in the 20 years since its release, the song has sold over 2.9 million digital downloads and logged over 603 million official on-demand U.S. streams. Many of those streams likely came from Duke University’s Cameron Indoor Stadium during the NCAA men’s basketball season, where “Everytime We Touch” has emerged as a go-to anthem to galvanize the Cameron Crazies.
As “Touch” was making its way up the American charts, Duke marching band director Jeff Au was settling into his new job after previous band directing stints at Elizabeth City State University and Towson University. He got to Duke in June 2005, and for the last 20 years, his philosophy has remained “get suggestions from students, see what works for a band, write [an arrangement] and go from there.”
As with any good college tradition, the origins behind Duke’s adoption of the hi-NRG dance staple are a bit hazy — but the story goes that a group of students (or maybe just Greg Caiola, then a sophomore and the band’s secretary) suggested adding “Everytime” to the band’s repertoire during an officer meeting. Au tells Billboard that the first time he heard the song was when the students played it in that very meeting.
“I thought it could work; it wasn’t going to be something we did a big halftime production to, because it’s not that intricate,” he says of his initial reaction to the song. “But a catchy song, combined with the students’ love for it, is a sure way to sell me on something.”
Making good on his promise to incorporate students’ suggestions and nourishing the top 40 proclivities he teased with the prior year’s interpretation of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,” Au quickly wrote an “Everytime” arrangement. Though “pretty spot on with the original,” Au’s version adds harmonies to the primary melody line and an ultimately unused woodwind section. He says it only took “three or four games” for the song to cement itself as a staple, and legend has it, that’s about how long it took for the accompanying student-crafted pseudo-choreography – dramatic slow claps during the verses and manic fist pumps during the chorus — to spread across the Cameron Crazies.
Several theories attempt to explain why “Everytime” stuck at Duke. Musically, the slow build of the song’s verses paired with its explosive choruses makes for the perfect soundtrack to the adrenaline-infused excitement that engulfs Cameron Indoor Stadium just before tip-off. What’s helped the song’s longevity at the school is that it isn’t tied to a specific moment, but rather a constant sensation that sometimes morphs from pre-game buzz to post-game victory. That feeling is borderline euphoric – the very phenomenon that inspired Maggie Reilly’s “Everytime We Touch,” the foremother of Cascada’s generational dance hit.
In 1992, Reilly ruled the European charts with her original “Touch,” the second single from Echoes, her debut solo album following several successful Mike Oldfield collaborations, including 1983’s “Moonlight Shadow.” Cascada’s version isn’t a straight cover, but it does lift Reilly’s entire chorus, which was inspired by the literal static shock she felt after hugging her boyfriend in an elevator at New York’s Mayflower Hotel — their first meeting in a long while.
“When somebody comes up with something new to add to [your song], it’s always quite exciting to hear,” reflects Reilly. “When I heard [Cascada’s version], it was very refreshing – and the video looked great as well. Within a very short period of time, I was told that it was doing amazingly in America for them, which was obviously exciting. It was like having a baby!”
With her legal team’s permission, Yanou and Manian, who both prefer to keep a low profile and are no longer a part of Cascada, interpolated Reilly’s chorus and wrote entirely new verses and production arrangements. Cascada’s rendition replaces Reilly’s yearning with decidedly more bombast, but the ecstatic feeling of connecting with a lover – whether on an elevator, dancefloor or basketball court – remains at the center.
“I get goosebumps every game, because I run our in-game experience for our men’s basketball program,” says Duke director of sports marketing Meagan Arce, “As the clock is ticking down and we get closer to me hitting the lights in Cameron, we play a [highlight reel] of past seasons, our fans and our students with ‘Everytime We Touch’ [in the background] and it’s one of my favorite moments of the game day experience. The song makes such a huge impact.”
Horler became aware of the song’s popularity at Duke “a few years ago” after getting tagged in videos on Twitter. Her manager explained to her Duke’s stature in the States, but she wouldn’t get a chance to connect with the school until 2020. For that year’s graduation, the university organized a virtual ensemble rendition of the song led by Horler and featuring members of the graduating class. “I had a lot of fun doing this during lockdown because, obviously, we weren’t very busy,” she reflects. “I thought they did such a great job. It was funny but also endearing. To use my song for that was pretty special.”
Now squarely a part of Duke tradition and lore – upperclassmen routinely pass the “Everytime” torch onto incoming freshmen – Cascada’s megahit has also become a foundational building block for any reputable nightclub playlist. In 2023, Billboard‘s staff honored it as one of the 500 Best Pop Songs of All Time (No. 211), and this week also named it the No. 8 Best Song of 2005. The song’s success – and that of follow-up Hot 100 hits, “What Hurts the Most” (No. 52) and “Evacuate the Dancefloor” (No. 25) — has allowed Cascada to embark on a fruitful career. The group’s first three LPs each reached the top 10 of Dance Albums, while Horler has successfully toured and played shows for the past two decades both with Cascada and as a soloist.
“I think music comes around again, and when you listen to ‘Everytime We Touch,’ you can actually [hear] those elements [like the synthesizer] coming out in modern music now,” says Horler. “It does not feel like 20 years — I’m still performing this song to this day!”
