Wir lieben Falco!

Einzelhaft is probably the best, and fits in nicely with that whole NDW scene.

In the case of Falco, I would say some of the singles were great, but he was hardly an album act of note.

Hadn't seen this before, some mean Wien shit:

Einzelhaft is such a great album. Fits in nicely with the whole Depeche Mode/Yaz/Duran Duran spectrum of New Wave

Not to mention the Nena/Trio/Alphaville/Peter Schilling spectrum of New Wave

http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/music-news/spotlight/new-wave-uber-alles-nena-falco-trio-and-the-80s-german-invasion/

when i started out as a college radio DJ, at age 17, the older guys at the station forced me to play the extended remix of 'rock me amadeus' to 'test the speakers,' as a sort of hazing ritual

Damn, had no idea that Nena stuck it out so long. IIRC Falco was in the scene for about 20 years but yeah I didn't even think that he was part of that scene with Trio and Schilling. I still remember George Kranz well.

Jeanny is absolutely chilling.

so is the song sung from the view of the murderer/rapist? my rudimentary German only can translate so much but I know there's a lot of "you and me, we need each other, they will find us"

Indeed it is.

Yes, it's often thought to have been inspired by Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger, although i think Falco always denied it.

I have a bangin' Eurodance cover by Polish glamour model Mandaryna somewhere. Doesn't really convey the same sense of menace.

Just picked up the "Falco Symphonic" release and it's really, really good! essentially it's a live album with a medium-sized orchestra playing all the keyboard/synth parts, though apparently there was a bunch of reconstruction involved. Outside of a few orchestral bits to kick off the tunes, the arrangements are pretty faithful to the original bits, they're still pop songs, just with a bigger sound. IMO Falco's never really worked with a great producer or arranger, all his stuff sounds very much of its time. So hearing these songs done with more inscrutable instrumentation highlights the fact that hey, these tunes were actually quite good!

oh shit i had forgotten this guy was dead

please can a mod add RIP to the thread title?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HE576lQb6w

i enjoyed that, thank you!

It's a pretty amazing song, and the only thing in his solo career that makes it at all plausible that he came out of the art rock scene. The lyrics are amazing.

He goes into the street
won't say where he's headed
His brain is full of heavy metal
and his liver is fucked up
His veins are open
and he stinks of formaldehyde
but that doesn't bother him
because he's in Vienna

All of Vienna
is on heroin today
All of Vienna
is dreaming on Quaaludes
All of Vienna
reaches for the Cocaine
(especially in the Ball season)
You can tell all of Vienna
is so beautifully fucked up.

Cocaine and Codeine
Heroin and Quaaludes
fuck us up
up up up
up up up up up.

There will come a day
when the Danube will rise over its banks
The goldfish fiddle in U4 [the Viennese Club 54]
Bruno [Kreisky, the Austrian Chancellor] will have long since made it to dry land
So we'll all learn to swim
We're floating already
All the devils in white robes
pure as the driven snow.

Studio 54, translating makes me stupid, sorry.

had never thought much about this song until I noticed the "Cocaine and Codine" line. givin Einzelhaft another listen now, what an incredible album this is

I now think that his follow-up single to Der Kommissar, Junge Römer, is really fantastic, although it is a ridiculously slavish Bowie pastiche, is pretty fantastic too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0ciGOnGy8I

fantastic pretty fantasticc beep beep boop syntax error TWU BOT SHUTDOWN.

"Data de Groove" - now there was a single

I had no idea that this guy had such a huge and varied career until last year, while visiting Vienna, my German friend took me through his whole catalogue. Falco seems like kind of a religion in Wien, we visited his grave and everything - I had no idea he was held in such esteem in the Deutsch-speaking world, given he was known for novelty hits in the Anglosphere.

only discovered this one recently - chorus is a bit shit tbh, but the verses are flipping boss:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPcsuHDkK9E

Aw, I quite liked the chorus, too.

My favourite ones always seem to be the very self-referential ones where he tells us how terrible and corrupt and awful things are in Wien, while making it clear at the same time, that Wien is the most excellent, badass and elegant place in the world?

the Symphonic album (a reconstructed version of a concert he did with a full orchestra) is really great

I have the first album on vinyl, it's quite good though very Bowie-esque

The only song that sounds anything like Bowie is Helden von Heute, which is a very conscious, knowing joke.

maybe I ought to relisten to it then, I remember liking it a lot

okay I forgot how goofy most of this album is. wish I spoke better German cuz I feel like a lot of these lyrics might be pretty funny

like Falco's delivery on half these tracks is making me crack up without even knowing what he's saying

Yeah, the lyrics are often quite witty and urbane. That was definitely kind something that opened up Falco to me, was listening to it with a native German speaker - I have basic tourist German - but she explained a lot of the jokes and references (there’s a bit of Austrian and German politics in places).

Also, apparently Germans find Viennese accents adorable, which was not a thing I’d really considered before!

ok if "Einzelhaft" means solitary confinement why does the song sound like the Village People

listening to "Emotional" right now god the title track is so fucking funny