Retro soul duo Charles & Eddie followed up their chart-topping hit Would I Lie To You with this story of how they first met on the New York subway.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a song that samples the ‘ping’ from Buffalo Springfield’s song For What It’s Worth will be well worth hearing.

The list of samplers ranges from Public Enemy (He Got Game) and Beyonce (Ameriican Requiem from her Cowboy Carter album) to Pop Will Eat Itself (X Y And Zee), Chumbawumba (Timebomb) and, most improbably, Butthole Surfers (Thermador).

None, I would argue, use it as effectively as Charles & Eddie on their autobiographical second single, NYC (Can You Believe This City?).

New York is the city where the duo famously first met on a subway train (the C train, to be exact) when Charles Pettigrew struck up a conversation with Eddie Chacon over the Marvin Gaye LP he was holding.

Or so the story goes – and, like all origin stories, it’s a good one.

The duo had a worldwide hit in 1992 with the meticulously retro R&B chart topper Would I Lie To You? and this was the follow-up, inspired by the story of that first meeting.

Pettigrew had been raised in Philadelphia, and went on to study jazz vocals at the Berklee College Of Music in Boston, while also singing with a pop band called Down Avenue.

Chacon had grown up in Oakland, California, where he formed his first band at the age of 12 with two childhood friends who also went on to find fame in the music world – Cliff Burton (Metallica) and Mike Bordin (Faith No More).

When he grew up, Pettigrew moved to Miami, Florida, becoming an in-house songwriter for CBS Records, working with the Dust Brothers (producers of landmark albums by Beastie Boys and Beck) and Daddy-O, who produced two solo albums for him.

As a duo, Charles & Eddie had a big hit with their debut album, Duophonic, but split up after the follow-up flopped. Pettigrew went on to sing with the Tom Tom Club on their 2000 album The Good The Bad The Ugly but died from cancer the following April. He was only 37.

Chacon worked as a photographer and creative director but returned to making music in 2000 after two decades of silence and released his third solo album in January 2025.

Meanwhile, Would I Lie To You is heading towards 100 million views on YouTube.