Schlager | |
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Stylistic origins | OriginalSubsequent: |
Cultural origins | 1950s, West Germany, [1] East Germany and Austria |
Subgenres | |
Dansband | |
Regional scenes | |
Other topics | |
Music of Germany |
Schlager music (German: [ˈʃlaːɡɐ] , "hit(s)") [2] is a style of European popular music that is generally a catchy instrumental accompaniment to vocal pieces of pop music with simple, happy-go-lucky, and often sentimental lyrics.
Typical Schlager tracks are either sweet, sentimental ballads with a simple, catchy melody or light pop tunes. Lyrics typically center on love, relationships, and feelings. The northern variant of Schlager (notably in Finland) has taken elements from Finnic, Nordic, Slavic, and other East European folk songs, with lyrics tending towards melancholic and elegiac themes. Musically, Schlager bears similarities to styles such as easy listening.[ citation needed ]
Schlager is a loanword from German. It also came into some other languages (such as Danish, Norwegian, Russian, Dutch, Czech, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Serbian, Turkish, Russian, [3] Hebrew, and Romanian, [4] for example), where it retained its meaning of a "(musical) hit". The style has been frequently represented at the Eurovision Song Contest and has been popular since the contest began in 1956, [2] although it is gradually being replaced by other pop music styles.
The roots of German Schlager are old. Originally it meant hit or strike. The first use of the word applied to music, in its original meaning, was in an opening night critique in the newspaper Wiener Fremden-Blatt on 17 February 1867 about The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II. [5] One ancestor of Schlager music in its current meaning may be the operetta, which was highly popular in the early twentieth century. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Comedian Harmonists and Rudi Schuricke laid the foundations for this new music. [6] Well-known Schlager singers of the 1950s and early 1960s include Lale Andersen, Freddy Quinn, Ivo Robić, Gerhard Wendland, Caterina Valente, Margot Eskens and Conny Froboess. Schlager reached a peak of popularity in Germany and Austria in the 1960s (featuring Peter Alexander and Roy Black) and the early 1970s. From the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, Schlager also saw an extensive revival in Germany by, for example, Guildo Horn, [2] Dieter Thomas Kuhn, Michelle, and Petra Perle. Dance clubs would play a stretch of Schlager titles during the course of an evening, and numerous new bands were formed specialising in 1970s Schlager cover versions and newer material.
In Hamburg in the 2010s, Schlager fans still gathered annually by the hundreds of thousands, [7] dressing in 1970s clothing for street parades called "Schlager Move". The Schlager Move designation is also used for a number of smaller Schlager music parties in several major German cities throughout the year. [8] (This revival is sometimes associated with kitsch and camp.)
Germans view Schlager as their country music, and American country and Tex-Mex music are both major elements in Schlager culture. ("Is This the Way to Amarillo" is regularly played in Schlager contexts, usually in the English-language original.)
Popular Schlager singers include Michael Holm, Roland Kaiser, Hansi Hinterseer, Jürgen Drews, Andrea Berg, Heintje Simons, Helene Fischer, Nicole, Claudia Jung, Andrea Jürgens, Michelle, Kristina Bach, Marianne Rosenberg, Simone Stelzer, Daniela Alfinito, Semino Rossi, Vicky Leandros, Leonard, DJ Ötzi, Andreas Gabalier and more recently, Beatrice Egli. [9] Stylistically, Schlager continues to influence German "party pop" or "Party-Schlager" (e.g. Layla , 2022): [10] that is, music most often heard in après-ski bars and Majorcan mass discos. Contemporary Schlager is often mingled with Volkstümliche Musik. If it is not part of an ironic kitsch revival, a taste for both styles of music is commonly associated with folksy pubs, fun fairs, and bowling league venues.[ citation needed ] In the English-speaking world, the most popular group to have included elements of Schlager in their style is probably ABBA, a band that mixed traditional Swedish music, Schlager, and pop-rock to create their own sound. [11]
Between 1975 and 1981 German-style Schlager became disco-oriented, in many ways merging with the mainstream disco music of the time. Singers such as Marianne Rosenberg recorded both Schlager and disco hits. The song "Moskau" by German band Dschinghis Khan was one of the earliest modern, dance-based Schlager, again showing how Schlager of the 1970s and early 1980s merged with mainstream disco and Euro-disco. Dschinghis Khan, while primarily a Euro-disco band, also played disco-influenced Schlager.[ citation needed ]
Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric piano, synthesizers, and electric rhythm guitars.
Traditional pop is Western pop music that generally pre-dates the advent of rock and roll in the mid-1950s. The most popular and enduring songs from this era of music are known as pop standards or American standards. The works of these songwriters and composers are usually considered part of the canon known as the "Great American Songbook". More generally, the term "standard" can be applied to any popular song that has become very widely known within mainstream culture.
A roots revival is a trend which includes young performers popularizing the traditional musical styles of their ancestors. Often, roots revivals include an addition of newly composed songs with socially and politically aware lyrics, as well as a general modernization of the folk sound.
The music of Finland can be roughly divided into folk music, classical and contemporary art music, and contemporary popular music.
Germany claims some of the most renowned composers, singers, producers and performers of the world. Germany is the largest music market in Europe, and third largest in the world.
The Netherlands has multiple musical traditions. Contemporary Dutch popular music is heavily influenced by music styles that emerged in the 1950s, in the United Kingdom and United States. The style is sung in both Dutch and English. Some of the latter exponents, such as Golden Earring and Shocking Blue, have attained worldwide fame.
Dschinghis Khan was a German Eurodisco pop band. It was originally formed in Munich in 1979 to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest with their song "Dschinghis Khan". The original group led by original members Henriette Strobel and Edina Pop ended in 2020 after the death of fellow member Johannes Kupreit, while a more current version of the group led by original member Wolfgang Heichel and Stefan Track has been active since 2018.
Popular music of the United States in the 1970s saw various forms of pop music dominating the charts. Often characterized as being shallow, 1970s pop took many forms and could be seen as a reaction against the high-energy and activist pop of the previous decade. It began with singer-songwriters like Carole King and Carly Simon topping the charts, while New York City saw a period of great innovation; hip hop, punk rock and salsa were invented in 1970s New York, which was also a center for electronic music, techno.
Hi-NRG is a genre of uptempo disco or electronic dance music (EDM) that originated in the United States during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Dance-pop is a popular music subgenre that originated in the late 1970s to early 1980s. It is generally uptempo music intended for nightclubs with the intention of being danceable but also suitable for contemporary hit radio. Developing from a combination of dance and pop with influences of disco, post-disco and synth-pop, it is generally characterised by strong beats with easy, uncomplicated song structures which are generally more similar to pop music than the more free-form dance genre, with an emphasis on melody as well as catchy tunes. The genre, on the whole, tends to be producer-driven, despite some notable exceptions.
Volkstümliche Musik is a modern popular derivation of the traditional Volksmusik genre of German-speaking regions. Though it is often marketed as Volksmusik, it differs from traditional folk music in that it is commercially performed by celebrity singers and concentrates on newly created sentimental and cheerful feel-good compositions. Volkstümliche Musik is sometimes instrumental, but usually presented by one or especially two singers and is most popular amongst an adult audience in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and also in South Tyrol (Italy), Alsace-Moselle (France), Netherlands, Flanders (Belgium), Slovenia, Silesia (Poland) and northern Croatia.
Italo disco is a music genre which originated in Italy in the late 1970s and was mainly produced in the early 1980s. Italo disco evolved from the then-current underground dance, pop, and electronic music, both domestic and foreign and developed into a diverse genre. The genre employs electronic drums, drum machines, synthesizers, and occasionally vocoders. It is usually sung in English, and to a lesser extent in Italian and Spanish.
Ralph Siegel is a German record producer and songwriter. Siegel is one of the most notable figures at the Eurovision Song Contest, in which he has participated with 24 songs so far, among them the 1982 winner song Ein bisschen Frieden.
Eurodisco is the variety of European forms of electronic dance music that evolved from disco in the late 1970s, incorporating elements of pop and rock into a disco-like continuous dance atmosphere. Many Eurodisco compositions feature lyrics sung in English, although the singers often share a different mother tongue.
"Dschinghis Khan" is a song by German disco group Dschinghis Khan. It was the West German entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1979 and released as the first single from the group's debut album, Dschinghis Khan (1979). It was a number one hit in West Germany, and a top 10 hit also in Austria, Finland, Norway and Switzerland. Cover versions by a number of other artists were subsequently released as singles and album tracks.
The expression Italian popular music refers to the musical output which is not usually considered academic or Classical music but rather has its roots in the popular traditions, and it may be defined in two ways: it can either be defined in terms of the current geographical location of the Italian Republic with the exceptions of the Germanic South Tyrol and the eastern portion of Friuli Venezia Giulia; alternatively, it can be defined as the music produced by all those people who consider themselves as Italians and openly or implicitly refer to this belief. Both these two definitions are very loose: due to the complex political history of the Italian Peninsula and the different independent political states, cultural and linguistic traditions which sprang within them, it is rather difficult to define what may be considered to be truly Italian. Since before the formation of a unified educational system and the spread of information through the radio and the press during the 1920s, all the different cultural and linguistic groups within the country were independent of one another, and a unified Italian country was still only a political or ideological concept far from the daily life.
Manila sound is a music genre in the Philippines that began in the mid-1970s in Manila. The genre flourished and peaked in the mid to late-1970s during the Philippine martial law era and has influenced most of the modern genres in the country by being the forerunner to OPM.
Dansband, or danseband in Norwegian and Danish, is a Swedish term for a band that plays dansbandsmusik[ˈdânsˌbandsmɵˌsiːk]. Dansbandsmusik is often danced to in pairs. Jitterbug and foxtrot music are often included in this category. The music is primarily inspired by swing, schlager, country, jazz, and rock. The main influence for rock-oriented bands is the rock music of the 1950s and 1960s.
Rosenstolz was a German pop duo from Berlin that was active between 1991 and 2012 and had chart hits in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The duo consisted of singer AnNa R. and musician Peter Plate, who occasionally provided vocals. Rosenstolz achieved major chart success after the nineties, with five studio albums going to No. 1 in the German albums chart. Although the duo split up to pursue separate music careers, they left open the possibility of a future reunion.