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REFUGEE CRISIS

IMMIGRATION

Pro-refugee group push punk classic to no. 1

Under the banner of "Arsehole Action", activists campaigning against xenophobia and hatred of refugees have pushed a 1993 hit by punk band Die Ärzte mocking the far right to the top of Germany's charts.

Published: 11 September 2015 17:26 CEST
Pro-refugee group push punk classic to no. 1
Die Ärzte singer and drummer Bela B. with a DVD titled "not interested in Nazis" in 2009. Photo: DPA

“You're really thick as pigshit
That's why you feel fine
Hate is your attitude
Your blood is always boiling”

That's how punk legends Die Ärzte opened “Schrei Nach Liebe” (Cry Out For Love), their 1993 hit that would go on to become an anthem in the German anti-fascist movement.

Its chorus about their imagined Nazi's psychological issues – “Your violence is a cry for love, your combat boots long for tenderness” – builds up to the one-word gut-punch of “arsehole” and has been a staple of left-wing activists ever since.

“Unfortunately, since the 90s the song has never been so relevant as now. History is repeating itself, and we should stop it,” a group calling itself “Aktion Arschloch” (Arsehole Action) posted on September 1st.

Their campaign has pushed the song to number one in the singles charts, a week after it beat out mainstream club hits in the iTunes charts and 22 years after its fist release.

“Success of this kind is unprecedented in German chart history,” said Mathias Giloth, who runs GfK Entertainment, which publishes Germany's official music charts.

Austrians and Swiss have also backed the campaign, sending the song to Number 1 in Austria and Number 2 in Switzerland, Gfk Entertainment added.

“Die Ärzte think it's good and important that positions are being taken on the radio. This would be a cool action with any other anti-Nazi song. But of course we're happy to support it if it must be our song,” the band wrote in a statement on their website.

Meanwhile, the song hit number one in the iTunes singles chart on Thursday, prompting the organizers to announce that “the action has hit like a bomb!”.

They called on supporters to ask music sellers to donate their share of the profits from the sales and to petition Die Ärzte to re-release the single on CD.

And while the band were happy to see the song hit number one on the iTunes singles chart on Thursday, all their share proceeds will be going to refugee aid organization Pro Asyl.

“We wish all Nazis and their sympathisers a bad time,” they said.

Along with 20 other well-known German bands including Beatsteaks, Deichkind and Die Toten Hosen, Die Ärzte will be in Berlin on Friday morning to sign their names to a call to action against far-right attacks on refugees in Germany.

There have been increasing numbers of far-right attacks on refugees in Germany as numbers fleeing to Europe from conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East increase.

Last month the German government announced that it expects up to 800,000 asylum applications in 2015.

But large numbers of ordinary Germans have also joined in grass-roots movements to help the desperate people arriving in the country, while Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned racism and xenophobia in a press conference on Monday.

SEE ALSO: Five ways you can help refugees in Germany

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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