80’s German Pop

I was watching televsion just a moment ago. Fox News, actually. And they played out to the commercial break with a track I’d almost forgotten.

It was called “Major Tom” by a German singer, Peter Schilling. Odd, since it was a favourite of mine when it was released about twenty five years ago.

So, of course I hopped on Youtube, and there it was all these years later.

And then it reminded me that for whatever reason, there was actually a string of German language pop songs which made the Australian charts in the early 1980s.

Here’s a few that spring to mind…

And, this one. Even though it’s about Moscow and was a hit in Australia in English, the B-side was the original version auf Deutsch.

There was also an Australian band which did a version of this song about the Russian invasion of Aghanistan too, by the way.

Of course there were others around the time too, including Boney M, Propaganda and Silver Convention who sang in English. But isn’t it interesting that, for a while at least, there were so many German language songs on the Australian pop charts. And yes, I know Falco was Austrian.

For me, it co-incided well with my German language studies at HSC level. Flashback.