FALCO – "Rock Me Amadeus"

My impression is that Adam Ant missed a trick not doing Mozart, and judging from Falco’s “oh hoh huh”s towards the end of “Rock Me Amadeus” it would appear that Antmusic’s influence pervaded even Austria. That having been said, the best Ant hits demonstrated a unique mix of complexity and simplicity, not to mention philosophical and psychological depths, which Falco seemed to have missed completely.

If Amadeus, Milos Forman’s film of Peter Shaffer’s study of how far mediocrity should be sacrified for the sake of one genius, unless the former has to kill the latter purely to survive, was equally complex despite its surface punkdom and its extremely distant relation to the real and considerably more symbiotic relationship between Salieri and Mozart, then Falco is undoubtedly the Antonio to Adam (and Marco)’s Wolfgang. Its purposely clumsy mix of sprechgesang, rap and Deutschlish (“No plastic money anymore, die Banken gegen ihn”) delivered in Falco’s rather unsexy, asthmatic, clipped pantings, isn’t naff enough for cheese, but neither is it startling enough to reveal a new European perspective on 1986 pop. With its absurd female backing vocal added to the 45 mix for easier American consumption, “Rock Me Amadeus” trundles along rather bumptuously and ultimately harmlessly in its (successful) quest for MTV-friendly bigness, but you wouldn’t want to spend a fortnight’s holiday with it.

Before I proceed I am going to finish reading this series of blog posts:
HOW I FOUND FALCO: PART 1 – OUT OF THE DARK

There’s a good running joke in the movie “Adventureland” about the murderous ubiquity of the song in the mid-’80s. I couldn’t get enough of it at the time, but I was 14 years old or so. I remember a girl in my class murmuring along to it, even the spoken “historical” bits: “1784–Mozart becomes a freemason.”

Sorry: mid-80s NME. Missed the crucial word.

I liked this at the time and still do because of the Germanic rhythms and tones of the vocal and for it’s complete inconsequentiality. Has it ever been sampled?

The Europopper that was hard to love. Falco’s “Der Kommissar” was much more catchy than this offering. However we all remember “Rock Me Amadeus”. The whole song is a mess that relies totally on it’s earworm of a chorus for it’s popularity. Falco, himself is another matter. In the UK, he’s remembered as a bit of a buffoon. In the US, he seems to have taken on the mantle of some kind of comedic pop culture “icon” (I use the word reservedly). He’s not only namechecked in 2 episodes of the Simpsons, but also American Dad, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and a cover of RMA by Weird Al Yankovic. Of course, in Austria he’s a national hero. They made a biopic and everything.

It’s sort of a 13-year old boy song, isnt it? I recall a parody version called Dropping Amadeus, which was on the radio so much they were talking about needing a Dropping Dropping Amadeus.

Holiday tip: to make sure your amaryllis blossom for Christmas, stand over the pot and chant Amaryllis Amaryllis Ama Ryllis.

I’ve been changing my mind back and forth on this. I used to like it a good deal, then concluded that it was maybe nothing more than amusing novelty after all, and now I’ve gone back to liking it again. It has some kind of aggressive party vibe to it – there just isn’t much else that sounds like Falco’s half-swallowed, smooth but still barked vocals.

I don’t think I’ve ever listened too closely to the lyrics, but it isn’t really necessary. I’m guessing that “Rock Me Amadeus” was never really concieved as just yet another eurodisco/europop song, as these – as far as my understanding goes – tended to have English lyrics in order to maximise potential popularity across Europe. I also assume that Falco considered himself a cut above your generic eurodisco project. And furthermore, I assume that his fanbase (outside of Austria, or at least the German-speaking countries) nevertheless consisted mostly of the same people who were heavily into italo/eurodisco, with a good deal of crossover to the rest of the record-buying public.

Forman’s film (which I haven’t actually seen) must have had some influence on the collective conciousness in the 80’s. “Rock Me Amadeus” wasn’t the only manifestation of it; I remember a good deal of interest in Mozart in general from my childhood – but not the music itself so much as the concept of Mozart, the Genius.

The 12″ Salieri Mix of this is truly over the top. You’d think that the video version is extravagant enough, but the 12″ mix is a spectacular demonstration of how to go nowhere while passing through just about everywhere else in the process. Name any contemporary production trick you can come up with, and you can bet it’s in there somewhere. It does work, in a way, but mainly because you’re constantly trying to guess what the song will throw at you next.

SwedenWatch: Cause for small celebration, as this is the first SwedenWatched™ Popular entry to get to #1 on both the sales chart and Tracks. Although it did so a good eight months before it hit #1 in the UK, which makes for a change, as the Swedish charts otherwise tended to lag behind the UK (or US) by weeks to months.

The e-newsletter NTK had a ‘Falco’ award after his demise, as a kind of tribute to dying companies.

Now this I really disliked at the time. I think mostly because reciting it may have formed a part of some bullying ritual, but even if it had been a hit in the school holidays I would have reacted with distaste. If feels – crucially – whacky rather than agreeably stupid. Adam Ant worked as a kind of wizard, beguiling you into a world of flamboyant nonsense, while Falco comes across as somebody who I really wouldn’t want to meet at a party.

Coming back to it again twenty or so years since I last knowingly properly heard it, I thought that I was going to like it – I heard Dale Winton play Vienna Calling a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it – but, sorry, it still sounds like a lot of annoying things crammed together and played too loud.

Re 20. My favourite Madonna song is embargoed >:x

A U.S. #`1 as well. Not quite as over-the-top as I remembered it, but this is still a strange one. And for that I give it a solid 7.

Live To Tell is a weird one – understated melody, with an odd three note instrumental hook and empty filmic breakdown in the middle, it sounds like it should pay you back after repeated listens but doesn’t really (the funk-lite synthy-guitar peeking its face round the door doesn’t help). From memory I thought it was about child abuse but the lyric’s pretty oblique. Madonna’s glam/dowdy 30s look in the video is quite something, though.

Intrigued to know what other people made of Amadeus the movie. It felt to me like a decent period drama with the main character inexplicably played by Poochie from The Simpsons.

@25, Wichita. I enjoyed Amadeus quite a lot when it was released (its ending with Salieri forgiving/absolving us all for overlooking his goodness etc. packed quite a punch/left one feeling absolutely terrible!). For whatever reason, however, I’ve not rewatched it since, whereas I’ve often revisited stellar contemporaries such as Once Upon a Time in America, Paris Texas, Blood Simple, Terminator, Brazil, Blue Velvet, Back to the Future. Amadeus feels a little worthy and middle-brow compared to those perhaps. [Somewhat similarly, I’ve only seen Forman’s ’70s smash Cuckoo’s Nest once (and enjoyed it a lot), whereas I rewatch contemporaries such as Chinatown, Godfather 1&2, Jaws, Shampoo, Badlands etc. at least every couple of years.]

…and more recently Julio Iglesias, “Begin the Beguine”

Yes, LTT is wonderful – love how diffuse and cryptic it is.

btw the Amadeus pastiches in the 30 Rock episode ‘Succession’ is likely the most I have laughed at anything on TV this decade.

#26: the last Europop number one?! Surely there are piles from the mid-90s when Europop got harder and dancier – and even a few by British acts.

Europop is indeed a broad church, it can encompass Eurorock, Eurodisco etc. I personally think it’s ok to use in terms of chart music from the Continent.

Fatgit @37 – But that was just what I meant. You’re defining something merely in terms of its “otherness” – it’s not from here (or even from there, which in this case probably means the US) – so it’s something else. It’s a definition that hinges on geographical origin rather than the form of the actual music.

I’m not railing against it merely because I’m part of “the Continent” from a British perspective; the same thing happens here. Living on a peninsula on one outskirt of Europe gives rise to the same phenomenon as living on an island on another outskirt. It’s not uncommon to hear Swedish people talking about “the Continent” or even “Europe” as something else, foreign, distant, that they themselves aren’t part of.

It’s just that I fail to see the true utility of that kind of negative definition. British versus non-British music, viewed from a British perspective – that I could understand. But I guess that sharing the language with the US and (at least partially) Canada, Ireland, and quite a few other places, makes it easier to frame it as anglophone versus non-anglophone (not necessarily regarding the music itself, but at least regarding its writers/performers/producers).

when I think of EuroPop I think of music which to my ears draws more strongly on European folk and music hall traditions rather than on American (Rhythm and) Blues. This can affect the melody, harmonies and/or rhythms of the music.
British Pop of the 60s and 70s drew on both (as well as other sources such as the Caribbean). Much of the jangly indie music of the mid 80s seemed to lose the syncopation that earlier bands had borrowed from black music(s) and drew on UK folk traditions – I believe Johnny Marr has spoken of the influence of Bert Jansch for instance.

This is a vast over simplification of course – but even when Boney M perform ‘Rivers of Babylon’ it sounds more oom-pah-pah than skank.

I’ve never heard Europop used to describe Abba so it strikes me as something that acts from outside the UK (or US) have had to transcend via sustained success, when consistently knocking out danceable pop songs at least. Did people also label a-ha this way (at least until their fourth album), given that synth pop as a term was presumably losing favour (by the same token describing the Pet Shop Boys as ‘synth pop’ never feels quite right)?

lonepilgrim – good point, especially when it comes to various kinds of Caribbean music. It seems as though the UK has long acted as a gateway, or filter, between American (in a wide sense) music and the rest of Europe. There are probably obvious reasons for this – the shared language as well as a large community of immigrants from the Caribbean. And, I assume, also from African countries where English is widely spoken.

So you get American music (which in itself draws on African roots), that gets exported to the UK, which does its own take on it, and then the result is further exported to the rest of Europe which in turn combines that with various local traditions. I can’t speak for other European countries but I think this holds true for Swedish music at least up to the real mainstream acceptance and hence popularity of rap music, in which case the UK seems to have been bypassed entirely as a source of influence. And that appears to have been a turning point after which British music no longer is anywhere near as influential. But this means we’re talking about the mid- to late 90’s, so I’ll leave it for now.

#39: Sweden-as-island is part of a theme that’s been recurring in a lot of my (non-pop) reading over the past year – Europe’s extraordinary political, economic and cultural vitality explained by its unusual internal divisions.

The idea being how natural and then political barriers have allowed Europe, a very small area in world terms, to function in modern history as a collection of separate, competing laboratories and progress essentially via conflict rather than consensus – achieving far more than, say, China has managed over the period. It’s affected my view of the map too – it’s possible to see Europe splintering into a whole series of islands round its northern and western edges, such that not just the British Isles but also the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, and even Spain and Portugal for most of the last 200 years, have been able to perceive themselves as being elsewhere and different from ‘Europe’.

I don’t know how well the theory applies today, now that communications are better and there is at least some progress towards a durable European political whole. I suspect pop works to too quick a timetable for competition to be anything other than transient anyway. There certainly are differences between gabba, balearic and italo, say, but it’s hardly like comparing folk, waltzes and flamenco.

TOTPWatch: Falco twice performed ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ on Top Of The Pops;

3 April 1986. Also in the studio that week were; Big Audio Dynamite, A-Ha and The Real Thing. Janice Long and John Peel were the hosts.

8 May 1986. Also in the studio were; The Cure, Chas & Dave and Billy Ocean. Janice Long and John Peel were again the hosts.