THAT'S where "music" videos go.
THAT'S where "music" videos go.
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Forum gossip thread
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Last post: December 24, 2024, 07:53:08 PM
Re: Forum gossip thread by Herman
avid Hasselhoff is HUGE in Germany
Started by realgrimm, May 09, 2017, 11:25:26 PM
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How did David Hasselhoff become popular in Germany?Quote
To the average American teenager the world of Bay Watch and Knight Rider is what it is - a hyper-glamorized, simplified, version of reality. German kids, though much better educated in the happenings of other countries, "learned" America from Colt Seavers (Lee Majors, "Unknown Stuntman/Fall Guy"), Michael Knight, and similar. And, throughout the 80s, America was idolized in Germany. The land of the free, truckers, wide open plains, happening cities, that stuff.
Hasselhoff became synonymous with those things.
He stood at the Wall, singing badly, yes, but his image and his song became tightly interlinked with those days, something no American can even remotely begin to fathom. You had to be there. You had to be watching the wall fall, watching the Trabbies cross into the West. You had to be around when East and West Germans became Germans. You had to be glued to the TV or spending time at Checkpoint Bravo and Delta, celebrating, hugging, feeling something that can simply not be described.
No matter how bad the music, no matter how badly written the speeches (Helmut Kohl's speech was abysmal because it was slapped together in a matter of an hour), this time will be forever enshrined in Germany's collective memory and whomever was there, deserved or not, will be too. It's not that "Looking for Freedom" is a great song. But to this day if you play Walk Like An Egyptian by the Bangles I remember my first "getting to second base" evening and that makes the song special. And if you play Looking for Freedom I remember the Berlin Wall in 1989 and this:
The song was actually written by a German composer. Before Hasselhoff's version became popular there was a German version called "Auf der Strasse nach Sueden" which played into the German fondness for everything Mediterranean and most any German kid grew up singing it in the car on family vacation drives to Italy or Spain.Quote
That all aside, here comes the rant.
"Are y'all still listening to Hasselhoff" is one of the most asked questions when I mention that I am part-German. And, yes, Germans do. Unlike Americans, I guess, whose crappy music changes on a weekly basis. Call me maybe, you know when the Jonas Brothers or Justin Bieber, Baby oh Baby, get together for a session with Mrs. Black on Friday.
Seriously, as a country whose popular music has reached THAT low a point, asking me about Hasselhoff is a little bit like the Arctic calling Dallas too cold because it snowed three days last year.
#7
@ the Berlin WALL 1989
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What David H. up to these days?Quote from: "iron horse jockey"
