04-12: It's Après Ski party time

In Britain the year 2012 starts with an uncommon mass of high quality products inside the charts. In Germany it is much more about selling well known hits and their remixes – it is Après Ski time. Cheesy dance productions benefit the most of this collective party mood this recent week. It makes DJ Antoine feat. The Beat Shakers rising 21–17 with their Ma Chérie which is a mixture of Mr. Saxobeat and Welcome To St. Tropez. For a second time the Swiss DJ can reach the German Top 20 – giving him slowly the status he has in his home country. The Beat Shakers who deliver voice (and hook line) mark a historical moment in pop business: they are the first Serbian act reaching the Top 20 in Germany.



Compared to DJ Antoine’s predecessor Welcome To St. Tropez (remixing Timati feat. Kalenna) the recent single follows a similar pattern. It takes a slow rise – now it collects 15 chart weeks. Welcome To St. Tropez ended up at number 3. Well, that’s a challenge. – It is still a question whether just entering track I’m On You can follow that pattern too. So far the remix of the Timati, P. Diddy & Dirty Money track lands at number 85 as DJ Antoine’s fifth chart hit in Germany.

Also rising again is the other big Swiss DJ of the moment. Collaboration team Mike Candys & Evelyn Ft. Patrick Miller was just honoured with Gold for 150.000 sold units of their dance hit One Night In Ibiza. The list sees the track taking a 54–39 leap.

It’s not only about the completely poor Après Ski sound–there are some regular dance productions benefitting from the lust for shaking too. First of all Kelly Rowland feat. The WAV.s make a huge jump to number 31 in their seventh chart week. Maybe this RedOne production finally catches fire. Also The DiscoBoys take their chance releasing a cover of Around The World as their next proper single. The original recording by project ATC was a number 1 hit in 2000 heavily melking the formula of cheesy and completely naive (or should I say childish?) eurodance pop. The new version drives the tune into a pseudo glamorous hedonistic disco track. The video hardly tries to be cool–unfortunately that’s the big difference to the original: it never supposed to be a good track and never was. People who seriously party to Around The World can only look embarassing–including semi tough rappers.



By the way: you can listen to the original Russian version from 1996 here.

Another dance track already released back in December is reanimated these days. The Swedish House Mafia vs. Knife Party reappears at number 63 with their Antidote. Still it is the track of the trio performing the weakest. – Also David Guetta heavily profits this week. His track Turn Me Back from the Nothing But The Beat album re-enters the list at number 77. There are some new remixes announced for the end of the month–the track featuring Nicki Minaj will hang around the list for sure next weeks.


The second big hit maker of the week is the casting show The Voice Of Germany once again. Besides a lot of typically short re-appearances of well known hits one act really profits from the airing. It is the coach team of The BossHoss. Their recent album Liberty Of Action still ranks inside the album Top 10 while the single Don’t Gimme That rises continously. This actual week it reaches the Top 20 giving the band its highest rank ever on the singles list. Certainly the track will rise to its peak next week when sales after Live Show #4 are take into account. In that show The BossHoss staged live with their hit.

Besides this longtime effect the show also causes directly the highest new entries in the German single’s list. Seeing the rates tumbling down for the third live show on January 13th the impact ain’t that massive compared to the week before. The highest new entry of the week Up by James Morrison featuring Jessie J was presented in the show by James Morrison and coach Xavier Naidoo. The single lands at number 19 in its first week on sale. It is James Morrison’s second single from the Awakening album and turns out to be the worst charting single since he stormed to number 1 with Broken Strings in late January 2009. To tell you a positive story–predecessor I Won’t Let You Go is propelled by the performance back up the charts and lands proper at number 64.

The best selling contestant for now is Katja Friedenberg. At the show she was kicked out by her coach Xavier – in reality she was the favourite of a lot of people. Number 41 for her take on Flugzeuge im Bauch (Airplanes In My Stomach) is much better than the performance of her Turning Tables interpreted a week earlier. The original of Flugzeuge im Bauch was a hit for Herbert Grönemeyer in 1985. It reached number 44. It became much more famous when it was covered by German Oli P. who brought the new recording to number 1 for seven weeks in 1998. The success in Austria and Switzerland was similar.

Comparing the original and the new version one will easily find the recent one surprisingly pathetic and chanson like. The one by Herbert Grönemeyer had much more connection to the real life and real emotions. Maybe that lack of authentic feelings is the reason why she had the leave the show.



Mic Donet is the second contestant who can launch a second chart hit–and he is one of the really big favourites of the show. On January 13th he performed the Killer / Papa Was A Rolling Stone medley first combined on a record in 1993 by George Michael while performing the Five Live concert remembering and celebrating the just died Freddie Mercury. The medley was a huge hit in Great Britain where it was released as a double A-side single with Somebody To Love. It never reached the list in Germany. Both parts of the medley were popular in Germany before. The original version of Killer was a hit twice. First it reached number 2 in 1990 credited to British dance producer Adamski only. Singer on that release was Seal who released an own version credited to him alone a year later. Once Killer was again a minor hit in Germany. It was in 1999 when German DJ ATB released it in a heavy trance version reaching number 31 in Germany.

The Temptations made the track Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone famous in Germany. Their version reached number 11 in 1972. In 1990 the version of Was Not Was reached number 14.

This is the Mic Donet version on TVoG



TvoG looses audience–one big reason are the starts of 2012 season of Deutschland sucht den Superstar (German version on Idols) and of the casting for the Eurovision Song Contest. The first show of Unser Star für Baku (Our Star For Baku) featured a contestant singing After Tonight a song written and recorded by US/Canadian Justin Nozuka. It was the only single hit for Nozuka in Germany reaching number 93 in 2009. In Switzerland and France the song had a much better chart performance. Now the track is back in the list–number 51 so far is the best position for the star.

The version presented in the show



Strange things going on at the low end of the list. An 9 years old song re-appears in the face of Lose Yourself by EMINEM. An instrumental version is used as the title theme of German TV serial Lenßen & Partner–a semi documentary about a lawyer and his cases. The serial started somewhen in 2003. Three years ago it was closed down. The old seasons of course are broadcasted in heavy rotation in the morning. A few days ago the channel SAT.1 announced a new season starting in March 2012. Probably these news caused a run on the DVDs of the past season and propelled the EMINEM track into the charts again. That’s my theory–if anyone knows a better reason, please let me know.