TTT: The other way around

It is time for another #ThreeTuneTuesday. For those not familiar with it, here's an explanation.

About 87 Weeks ago @ablaze started this incredible movement:

Every Tuesday I'm going to share 3 songs which I like to listen to and I invite your feedback in the comments below. Or why not have a blast of your own Three Tune Tuesday and mention me in the post and I'll come and find the post and hopefully upvote it. It'll be a sweet way for us all to discover new music.

For this week I twisted my usual theme a little bit. Instead of a German band I will present you cover songs of German songs.

Nena's 99 Luftballons was such a great hit in 1983 that it was played all over the world (At least in the West, we still had the iron curtain back then). So it was only a matter of time before someone would make a cover of it. Guess what, Nena did it herself one year later in English. With her being the original artist it is no wonder that the lyrics are lose enough to give a wonderful flow for any singer and yet keep the spirit and meaning of the original intact.

Goldfinger then made a rock cover in 2000.

I applaud them especially for bringing the 3rd stanza in the original German.

In our youth we were playing Nena's original a lot. When we were adults and this rock version came out, it quickly replaced the original at any party, at least for us (punk)rock fans.

David Hasselhoff has a huge connection to Germany. It is one of the stereotypes that Germans just love David Hasselhoff. Yes, he was big here in the 80s and 90s. I remember watching Knight Rider as a kid over and over again. The big scope of the story was a mystery to me and I couldn't care less about that. I just wanted to see David Hasselhoff and Kitt the car!

And there is still a debate in what way he contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall, especially with his performance of "I've been looking for freedom" in 1989.

Now he is back and he brought an English cover of another party classic with him. "Verdammt ich lieb' dich" (Damn it, I love you), was originally a song by Matthias Reim and came out in 1990. With that title it's not hard to be played at a teenager party with all those hormones going haywire.

And as a bonus he also gives us a German rendition of the original chorus. Brave and well done. As well as the translation. Again, it is not a word for word translation but close enough to capture the meaning and spirit.

I have to admit, the next one I just found today. I was doing some research for this post and trying to decide what other German/English song to include when I made an astonishing discovery.

My favorite piece of German big band swing music (Oh no, did the rock guy just admit he likes swing? Yes, he did and he actually loves it almost as much as rock) is originally from 1928. "Mackie Messer" has such a great story behind it. Trying to keep it short:

Bertholt Brecht wrote the play "Die Drei Groschen Oper" (The Three Penny Play) and a few days before the premiere the star playing the protagonist "Mack the Knife" demanded a worthy introduction of his character. Brecht suggested a short ballad listing his deeds and they wrote the song almost over night in a hurry.

This fact explains the simple structure, which in my opinion is a big part of its success. It quickly became the most famous song of the entire play.

Lots of (mostly German) covers were created, it quickly turned from a very slow expositional ballad into a piece of swing music for big bands.

It was then covered in English starting in the 50's by many artists and quickly became a title for big band swing music.

Here is Robin Williams's version.

So there you have it, I gave my usual theme a little swing around. Next week I will be back with another German connection and hope to see/hear/read you again.

Thank you for reading and keep on rocking 🤘

---

_{The embedded videos and songs are not mine, nor do I own any rights to them. They are embedded from youtube and serve an illustrative purpose for this article}

Header image created with Canva
Divider created with Canva