

In the US, “Der Kommissar” made the Billboard club charts but missed the Hot 100. 1981’s “Der Kommissar,” a bouncy new wave song with some quasi-rapped vocals, was a smash all around Europe and also in Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

Upon returning to Vienna, young Falco fell in with the city’s arty underground club scene and made the debut single “ Ganz Wien,” a track with a hook that translated to “all of Vienna is on heroin today.”įalco’s second single was the one that broke him in Europe. As a teenager, he spent a year studying at the Vienna Conservatory, but he left to play in bands in West Berlin for a little while. Johann Hölzel came from Vienna and fell in love with pop music as a kid. It could’ve been gibberish, and it would’ve hit the same.įalco’s brief moment of American stardom was a weird little fluke, but he’d been a big deal in Europe for a few years before he showed up on MTV in that pink wig. Also, “Rock Me Amadeus” has a huge, ridiculous singalong chorus.
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Amadeus had been a huge hit, a Best Picture winner that was also the #14 movie on the 1984 year-end box-office list. Certain terms transcend language: “superstar,” “rock idol,” “punk.” And thanks to the Forman film, Americans had a pretty good idea what Falco was describing. And then there was Falco, the peacocking Austrian whose ode to Mozart somehow elbowed its way onto pop radio and became the biggest German-language hit in American history.įalco’s “Rock Me Amadeus” lyrics are almost entirely in German, and yet you can get the basic gist even if you don’t speak the language. First there was Walter Murphy And The Big Apple Band’s “ A Fifth Of Beethoven,” which translated an 1808 Ludwig Van symphony into a giddy disco party. In the ’70s, prog rock bands went even further, writing long symphonic opuses with multiple movements that would take up entire LP sides.īut there’s something primally satisfying about how the #1 hits that most blatantly reference classical music are among the silliest, most disposable chart-toppers in Hot 100 history. Burt Bacharach forged a hugely successful career by making his arrangements as tricky and fussy as possible. In the early ’60s, pop producers who aimed for sophistication piled strings all over their tracks. For many of those strivers, classical music has represented something loftier - an escape from the bubblegum trenches. There’s a theme that runs through all pop music: Musicians who thought they were too good to be making pop music. According to his estate.In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. 1 in January 1961 with the instrumental " Wonderland by Night "). 1 on the Billboard charts in 1986, making him the only artist whose principal language was German to score a vocal number-one hit in the United States ( Bert Kaempfert reached No. When did Falco's Rock Me Amadeus hit No.1?įalco (musician) "Rock Me Amadeus" reached No. The basic concept is the suggestion that Mozart was the rock'n'roll rebel of his day. His last three years were his most successful and he had an extremely excessive lifestyle. Mozart was a child prodigy who performed his first musical tour at the age of five. The song is about the classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). Why is the song Rock Me Amadeus about Mozart? "Rock Me Amadeus" was written by Falco alongside Dutch music producers Bolland & Bolland.

The single was made available for physical sale in May 1985 in German-speaking europe, through A&M. "Rock Me Amadeus" is a song recorded by Austrian musician Falco, for his third studio album Falco 3 (1985). Frequently Asked Questions Who was the original singer of Rock Me Amadeus?
