Katrina and the Waves singer on why you can’t dance to their beloved one hit wonder

It’s regularly voted the “happiest song on the planet” but the singer of Walking on Sunshine reveals why she doesn’t get royalties from the billion-streaming hit.

The singer of Katrina and the Waves has enjoyed four decades of touring the world off the back of the “happiest song of all time”, Walking on Sunshine.

But Katrina Leskanich hasn’t made money off the billions of downloads of the 1985 pop classic since she left in 1998 after a series of disagreements with her bandmates.

Ahead of her 80s Mania tour with members of Wang Chung and the Escape Club, Leskanich said the royalties had been split among the band members before they finally split in 1999 but now solely reverted to its British songwriter Kimberley Rew.

“Walking on Sunshine pays the bills because live music is where I’ve always made my money off, and the songs that I’ve written,” she said.

“Our guitar player wrote the song so I imagine he’s sitting by his 12 swimming pools.

“We always split (the royalties) until the band split up, which was fair enough. I didn’t want something for nothing.”

Katrina Leskanich of Katrina and the Waves is back in Australia. Picture: Mike Inns / Supplied.

Leskanich has been a regular visitor to Australia courtesy of the insatiable appetite for the soundtrack of the 80s and its stars, performing on the Countdown Spectacular tour in 2007 and Totally 80s with Martika and Berlin.

The song has kept her in gigs courtesy of its generational refresh each time it pops up in film and television.

It was famously propelled back into the zeitgiest in 1989 when John Travolta danced to it with the baby in Look Who’s Talking and again when Jack Black hilariously busted moves to the song in 2000’s High Fidelity. The Glee cast mashed it up with Beyonce’s Halo in an Season One episode in 2009.

“The thing about Walking on Sunshine is it’s a novelty song that really serves a purpose as one of the few totally, really feel good songs you can count on,” Leskanich said.

She nominates Travolta’s dance moves as her favourite because “imagine if John Travolta heard me say it was Jack Black!”

But the truth is, as anyone who has ever tried to keep up with Walking on Sunshine on the dancefloor knows, the song is actually impossible to dance to, even as it has inspired TikTok challenges.

“It is completely impossible to dance to; I’ve seen the ugliest dad dancing you’ve ever seen,” she said.

“I’ve stood up there on stage and seen millions of people try and dance to this song, and it usually starts as a pogo. And now, people of a certain age who knew and loved the song think they can pogo for three and a half minutes, and it’s not happening. They end up bent over, panting for oxygen.

The musician tours the world courtesy of the one hit wonder. Picture: Lasse Rilvaag / Supplied.

“What I do now is cut the beat in half and move on every other beat so I can look cool and actually make it through to the end of the song without having a heart attack.”

Walking on Sunshine isn’t Leskanich’s only claim to pop fame. Katrina and the Waves was the last British entry to win the Eurovision Song Contest, way back in 1997 with their entry song Love Shine A Light.

The American-born singer, whose family moved to England in 1976, had zero clue about the European singing Olympics when Katrina and the Waves were selected to represent the UK.

Katrina and The Waves hit the charts worldwide in the mid 1980s and also won Eurovision before splitting. Picture: Supplied.

“I had never seen the contest before I did it. I was given a bunch of videotapes and told by the BBC to watch them to get my head around it and I came away more confused than I was before I’d seen the tape,” she said.

“So I just decided to go with it. And I thought, nobody ever votes for the UK anyway, and they sure as hell aren’t going to vote for an act with an American singer, so I’d just relax, go to Ireland, have a couple of Guinness and enjoy myself. I had absolutely no expectation of winning.”

*80s Mania opens at Perth’s Astor Theatre on March 18 and then heads to The Gov, Adelaide on March 20, Palais Theatre on March 21, Enmore Theatre on March 22, Dee Why RSL on March 23, The Tivoli, Brisbane on March 29 and Twin Towns, Tweed Heads on March 30.

Originally published as Katrina and the Waves singer on why you can’t dance to their beloved one hit wonder