ECHO stories

Yes – I told you in the short flash on Tuesday that there is no story about the recent list of most sold single tracks in Germany. But you know – never trust a single blogger. There is always something to tell. At least some tales about older tracks still crowding up the charts. One of these songs is Rolling In The Deep by English singer Adele which climbs back four places to No.4 after her performances in Germany. In her home country the UK she just broke the record of holding most weeks at No.1 in the album charts as a female soloist by standng there for 10 weeks. She not only dethroned queen of pop Madonna – she also occupies the No.2 of the album list with her predecessor album 19 and is No.1 in the track list with Someone Like You. Chart commentator James Masterton actually only find these words: Stop Buying Adele Records.

Of course also in Germany Adele is one of the most talked about artists of the moment. There are countless features about her on TV most popular probably her performance at the more or less boring ECHO award ceremony broadcasted on 24th March. Needless to say that everybody’s darling found her way to the underground mashup scenery as well. For having a little taste of what’s going on I present one of my favourites right here:


Divide & Create – Crazy In The Deep .... Adele vs. Gnarls Barkley

In companion with Rolling In The Deep a second track from Adele’s album 21 is entering the list as an album cut. We’re talking ’bout Set Fire To The Rain a heart touching ballad which is announced as the next official single release. It has by now no scheduled release date but sits actually at 89 on downloads only.


Another act benefiting from the ECHO is British HURTS. They got the award as best international newcomer and performed live as well. Stay jumps back 13 – 8 and their hit Wonderful Life does so 66 – 49 in its 34th chart week.

Most successful German track still is Strobo Pop. Die Atzen mit Nena climb one place to 14. Second place in the German only survey is still Lena with her Taken by a Stranger sliding 23 – 27 in the official tracks list. And even culcha candela is still the third of the German tracks with Berlin City Girl sliding 28 –32. One who should be a candidate of bringing tracks to a larger audience is Clueso. He lands this week the highest CD album start at No.2 in that list.The single Zu schnell vorbei (Over too fast) taken from that album jumps up the list 53 – 42. That’s unfortunately not enough to share the crown of the most popular German tracks. But there is hope: his last hit Gewinner (Winner) took 16 week in 2009 to peak at 21.

Are you interested what else is going in German music business? Well – a new mixture of Atzen sound and brainless party discofox has entered the club scene. „Inventors“ of the sound is the DJ duo Finger & Kadel. They already had a medium hit with Die mit dem roten halsband (The one with the red collar) in late 2007 under the name Frank Styles presented by F&K. After getting that attention for the first time they produced much more for the clubs and dancefloor the following years. Always sampling short German lyrics. Finally they chose one of the most popular German party hits called Wahnsinn first released in 1983 by Wolfgang Petry. The song had some short chart appearances in the version of Die Lollies (1998) and DJ Nordkurve (2002) – the most successful take was the one of Wolfgang Petry’s son Achim Petry who recorded it for the 2008 season of the so called Dschungel Camp. The latter went to Nr. 17 in the German charts. Now a next try is starting its chart life. Finger & Kadel mixed the chorus with some Benny Benassi sounds and lyrics. As I said before – to me it sounds like the next step of the very popular Atzen sound but it’s very unlikely that the track will rise higher (new entry at 58).




The original version of 1983

German rapper Fler offers a second track from his recent album Airmax Muzik II. Predecessor Nie an mich geglaubt (Never believed in me) was a digital only release spending one single week at No.64 in February. Minutentakt (Minute Circle) comes as a full CD release but performs only slightly better. No.60 in the week of its release is far away from the success he had a few years ago.




At 79 one of the very few Russian chart acts appears with a new track. I personally remember only three acts have been charted in Germany. The fourth and most recent is rapper Timati. Two years ago he appeared for the first time with a minor hit accompanied by US star Snoop Dogg. The following years he collaborated with big names like Busta Rhymes, Xzibit or P. Diddy.The latest international offer reatured upcoming Kalenna Harper of Diddy’s side project DirtyMoney. The track Welcome To St. Tropez first released 2009 in a Russian version with Blue Marine is available in English for a few months. A remixed version by Swiss DJ Antoine found its way on a few club compilations and finally catches fire. The Official Dance Charts see the track actually rising 14 – 12 and this week the track enters the singles chart on download sales at No.79 making Timati the second Rusian artist with more than a single chart hit.


Russian version

Finally at the very end of the list we see Norwegian a-ha returning into the chart. A track from their Good by live album Ending On A High Note made it on downloads to the charts. It is their hit from the year 2000 Summer Moved On which charted exactly 11 years ago No.8 giving the band a Top 10 hit after a 10 years break. Afterwards it took the band another 9 years to launch what should be their second biggest hit ever Foot Of The Mountain. The live version of Summer Moved On enters at 90.