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7 songs to make your German lover swoon on Valentine’s

Germans aren’t known as an overly emotional bunch. But they’ve still created some of the most powerful ballads of all time - these seven are guaranteed to melt even the hardest Teuton heart.

Published: 10 February 2016 15:04 CET
7 songs to make your German lover swoon on Valentine's
Helene Fischer. Photo: DPA

Matthias Reim – Verdammt ich Lieb dich (Damn it I love you)

The great 80s pop singer Matthias Reim sung of his conflicted feelings for an ex-lover in this moving ballad. But if the video is anything to go by, it all had a happy end.

Serenade your German mistress with the lines “Verdammt ich liebe dich/ ich lieb dich nicht/ Verdammt ich brauch dich/ ich brauch dich nicht/ Verdammt ich will dich/ ich will dich nicht verlieren” and you’re sure to make them weak at the knees.

Do it wearing a leather jacket and sporting a luscious Vokuhila (mullet) and you'll shoot 'em dead.

Blümchen – Herz an Herz (heart to heart)

This classic from 1995 is a world in which people only date through their computers and is perfect for all those millennial romances.

With charmingly literal translations from German into English, it tells the story of Jimmy and Patsy who met “in the internet” not knowing that they live “wall to wall.”

Before Blümchen technofied it, the song was a 1985 hit for Paso Doble. So if you're into a more toned down, thoughtful version, look to the original for inspiration.

Pur – Abenteuerland (adventureland)

This is the story of breaking out from the shackles you’ve been bound with in your day-to-day and seeing the world anew again.

Offer to lead that über-rational German on a trip to adventureland where “the cost of entrance is reason” and he’ll be shedding those rimless glasses and well cut jackets as fast as you can say Schlager.

Nina Hagen – Heiß

If you want to be a little more direct, try screaming out the chorus of this raucous ditty.

Mir ist heiß/ ich bin Heiß/ Ach, warum sind denn nicht alle so heiss? (I’m hot/ I’m horny/ Why isn’t everyone so horny?’)

Not only will it leave absolutely no doubt about your intentions, it’ll also prove you know how to use the dative case to talk about your body temperature and the nominative for your level of arousal – if that doesn't turn on a German we don't know what will.

Modern Talking – You’re my heart, you’re my soul

The duo of Thomas Anders and Dieter Bohlen were together as Modern Talking for a brief but euphoric spree of mulleted, bejewelled, synthetic coated gloriousness in the mid-80s, producing some of the most successful pop in Germany history.

'You’re my heart, you’re my soul' is not only their most successful, but also their most gushing ballad.

Bohlen has gone on to mentor many a new German pop star we've never heard of on Deutschland sucht den Superstar, but is yet to find one who can match the quality of song like 'Cherie, Cherie Lady' and 'Brother Louie.'

Herbert Grönemeyer – Halt mich

Wärm mich an deiner Stimme/ leg mich zu Ruhe in deinem Arm/ halt mich, nur ein bisschen/ bis ich schlafen kann. (Warm we with your voice/ calm me in your arm/ hold me just a little/ till I can sleep)

In his prime the great Gröner the Crooner knew how to please the ladies – if the apple of your eye is a Hausfrau in her fifties, this is the song to enchant her with.

Helene Fischer – Atemlos durch die Nacht (Breathless through the night)

What list of German love songs could be complete without a ballad from the queen of German pop herself?

Who else but the most captivating Russian import since the Berlin wall could have come up with the lyric “I close my eyes, get rid of every taboo/ a kiss on the skin, like a love tattoo”?

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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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