Life of Brian with Brian Hicks
When I lived in Germany, I was impressed by its music and became a fan of what they call Schlager.
These are pop songs with a catchy melody and musical accompaniment, easy to sing along to and usually about love and related themes.
Two of my UK cousins also got hooked after visiting and seeing live concerts.
Germans have mixed opinions about Schlager and many of my friends teased me about my interest. One of my favourites is Howard Carpendale, a South African who has been making hits for 50 years. His latest CD has new recordings of his best hits accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Schlager fans are primarily in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Some of the stars have released English versions of their songs, most notably Helene Fischer, 36, Germany’s leading female singer, but with limited success. She released The English Ones in 2010, but has never given a concert in the UK or US.
Helene had ballet training and dances in many concerts, most notably in her 69-show tour featuring dancers from Cirque du Soleil.
Her 2013 hit, Atemlos (Breathless), became an unofficial anthem of the 2014 World Cup. Despite the limited fan base, Helene Fischer was ranked as the eighth top earning pop singer in the world in 2018 with $32 million in a list headed by Katie Perry and Taylor Swift at about $80 million each. If English had been Helene’s mother tongue, she might well be topping those charts by now.
For the past decade, Helene Fischer has hosted a Christmas Day TV spectacular on Germany’s ZDF channel at 8.15pm, lasting over three hours. These are filmed beforehand in Düsseldorf, with many star guests. One featured Olly Murs and Tom Jones.
Ironically, the Irish-American Kelly family, on the German scene for nearly 50 years, sing in English and are an important part of the Schlager scene as are Italian and French acts. Bonnie Tyler enjoys performing in Germany and has sung some great duets with Schlager stars such as Matthias Reim and Ben Zucker, as have Lionel Ritchie and Chris de Burgh.
One of the leading male Schlager stars is Roland Kaiser. He recorded a recent big hit, Warum hast du nicht nein gesagt? (Why didn’t you say no?), with Maite Kelly, now a solo artist and previously part of the Kelly Family. A video of it has attracted over 130 million hits on YouTube.
Germany’s gossip and women’s magazines love to speculate and report on the Schlager stars, usually with several stories in each edition. Helene Fischer’s first public appearance was in a programme of TV channel ARD in 2005 with the German Schlager star, Florian Silbereisen, and they soon became a pair.
They never married, to the disappointment of fans, and split up a few years ago after Helene fell for one of the dancers in her show.
Silbereisen started out as an accordion player and now comperes many Schlager concerts and TV shows.
He also recently set up a new band, Klubbb3, with two other male singers, one a star from Holland, Jan Smit.
Sales of Schlager music have been booming over the last five years, although live Schlager concerts have ground to a halt with coronavirus.
The Austrian singer, Nik P, composed and recorded a top hit, Einen Stern, den deinen Namen trägt (a star that bears your name) in 2007. Fellow Austrian, DJ Ötzi, liked it so much he persuaded Nik to release another version with both singing together. It became an even greater hit, topping the German singles charts and staying there for a record 106 weeks.
They both still sing the song frequently on shows and other stars have recorded it in different languages, but not English.
Why not see if you like Schlager too?
