Schlagermusik is a Genre I only know from german speaking regions. I am interested in hearing what non-german speaking people think about this cultural phenomenom.
If you wanna check it out: A few popular artist are: Helene Fischer, Michelle, Udo Jürgens, Matthias Reim, Jürgen Drews..
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Pretty sure what’s basically old people’s german pop music in german language is pretty unknown outside of, well, germany and german speaking countries.
That said, Finland has it’s own variant, which is known as Iskelmä.
You must not have heard of the Dutch influence in Schlagermusik. There’s several well-known Dutch artists like Jan Smit and Chantal who are active in the Schlagerscene. It’s relatively popular party music.
I see the majority of it as low effort pop music with few good hits. The performers tend to be prolific in their releases. Usually one a group’s good output can fit on one compilation disc. The style of music has suffered from the loudness war in recent decades and the decline of melody. Schlager music often features strong reverb or a choir of background singers, which makes the tune hard to decipher with strong compression.
I like schlager music from earlier years. The peak of production quality was the late 80s and early 90s, and earlier records seemed to eschew distortion that was prominent in British and American pop. There is a comprehensive compilation series “Das goldene Schlager-Archiv: Die Hits des Jahres” which covers years 1950 through 1989 with many good tunes by artists such as
Freddy Quinn, Heino, Christian Anders, Udo Jürgens, Peter Alexander, Frank Farian’s acts, Ricky King, Die Flippers, Kirsti, Wind, Dieter Bohlen, Manuela and Drafi Deutcher to name a few examples.
There is a special category of schlagers that is used for wintersport, like this one:
[Skihütte Party](https://open.spotify.com/track/7BpTWcKETg45u2EBJFPrMM?si=5gXQ77p1RTqk3bHxp6QAcg)
Very little exposure in the UK; I’m probably most familiar with it from the Eurovision back catalogue. IMO it’s pretty cringe, like bad easy listening or country, and much less listenable than easy listening French or Italian music from the same period.
We have similar music in The Netherlands and festivals as well. Often its called piratenmuziek or levenslied.
It’s horrible. We have the genre too in Belgium. It’s music for simple people that like to get drunk and do polonaise
I’m German and I find it absolutely terrible. It’s dumb music for dumb people. It’s the reason why I avoid carnival, village celebrations of any kind, après ski and Oktoberfest. The moment I hear it at a party, I have to leave. I hate it with my guts.
I think it’s often poor and lowest common denominator music with a simple beat, catchy melody and shallow lyrics. Music that German pensioners can easily clap along to on TV shows. I’d say the high point was through the end of the 70s to the 80s. Today, there’s a feeling of cheapness with most schlager, especially the videos, and a music by numbers approach.
That said, there’s a number of very good songs that have come out of the genre which are deservedly seen as German language classics. An old colleague of mine’s husband was really into Schlager and he always argued that Schlager just makes you feel good – each to their own I guess!
I mentioned the cheapness above, but it must also be said there are artists trying to push schlager-iness into the pop mainstream. You can see and hear the attempts to modernise, improve the image, and above all higher production efforts. Yet the language will always prove a hurdle to wider acceptance.
There are other countries with comparative music genres. A friend with Serbian roots once mentioned how her people and other folks from the Balkan have these sad love songs describing for example “a strange girl with eyes black as wine” who they fell in love with and now they’re heart-broken etc etc. Apparently if such a song is successful, other countries will copy the tune and put in their own lyrics. The song she put on to demonstrate what she spoke about was some mans voice rather wailing than singing, the heart-ache was pretty clear to hear.
I’m not a fan of Schlager music, I find it shallow and cringy. Apparently drunk and/or old people at events like Oktoberfest love it. The sheer thought of such an occasion makes me shudder.
Udo Jürgens ? If all Schlagermusik would have that niveau, I would be a fan. This song is originally from the 70s
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0eheqRTJ2J0
Text translated with google translate:
We’ve lived in this apartment building for a year and are well-known here.
But guess what I just found under our front door?
It’s a letter from our neighbors, saying we have to leave!
They say you and I don’t belong in this respectable building.
Because we live together as a couple and are still unmarried.
They met here yesterday and voted.
And now the entire community of tenants is telling us, “Move out!”
(Hey, hey, hey)
Because living together without being married doesn’t belong in this respectable building.
Everyone signed it. Take a look at the long list
the woman next door who can never keep her lies to herself
and the one on the ground floor, spying on everyone every day
even that guy who beats his daughter speaks volumes for this honorable house
and then the fat woman who spoils the dog but forgets her own child
the old man who’s always telling us what’s forbidden in this house
and the one on the first floor, always looking out the window
(hey, hey, hey)
and he reports everyone who parks illegally in front of this honorable house
the gray Don Juan who shamelessly stares at you every time you’re in the elevator
the widow who stopped a Black person from moving in
even the one upstairs, when the gas man comes, she takes off her dressing gown
they’re all ashamed of us, because this is an honorable house
if you ask me, this hypocrisy I can’t stay here any longer.
We’re packing our things and leaving this honorable house.
Schlager music actually used to be incredibly popular in Sweden, and still is in some circles. A lot of Swedish artists have also made it quite big within the schlager genre in Germany. I do feel like Swedes and Germans have in common a certain love of unabashed kitsch, sappy love songs and sentimentality.
We in Sweden also commonly used to refer to the Eurovision Song Contest (and the Swedish qualification) as simply Schlagerfestivalen – the Schlager Festival. It’s still colloquially called that sometimes, even though there are of course a lot fewer true schlagers are competing now.
We also have a genre of music in Sweden called dansband, which is basically a mix of schlager and country music, with a bit of pop music thrown into the mix as well. The large dansbands even today draw huge crowds and many have made quite big careers in Germany as well.
t just sounds lke eurodance musc. It’s fine. I don’t get the hate. Yes it’s mindless, but what’s wrong with that… sometimes you just want some mindless music…
German schlager music even gets played sometimes on the radio. One popular radio station has even a guilty pleasure hour where it gets played. Haus am See by Peter fox or Atemlos durch die Nacht by Helene Fischer are or were popular songs to play
When I hear german schlager I always thing of this old MTV sketch: [https://youtu.be/VCHEv1cDG9U?si=ON6sTHIlYtWOTk8q](https://youtu.be/VCHEv1cDG9U?si=ON6sTHIlYtWOTk8q)
There’s a similar musical scene in Portugal slightly influenced by Schlager called [pimba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimba). Pimba has a bad reputation in Portugal due to the vulgar lyrics and the low effort production but it’s very popular in many parties and celebrations all over the country including weddings. Personally there’s only a few pimba songs I like and I don’t mind the unpretentiousness of it, but it baffles me how popular some pimba artists and songs are. I haven’t heard that many Schlager songs but from what I’ve read here I guess my feelings towards it would be similar to the way I view pimba
It’s sing-along music for parties: shallow but fun. I have a couple of Helene Fischer songs on my running playlist.
Yeah, I hate it, sorry mate. Especially because we have localized version of schlagers (modern german schlagers are okayish I guess)
For me, it’s literally soundrack to either bad rural wedding where men fought each other or to grannies squirting their pants over Fico.
Can’t decide.
We have a similar genre in Portugal known as [Pimba](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxaI2x32mnI&list=RDNxaI2x32mnI&start_radio=1). A very kitschy style of music that you’ll often here at village and town fairs and other such events, as well as something that’s featured a lot in daytime TV programs. It’s very tacky and I’m amazed at just how many Pimba artists there are because I don’t know anyone who listens to the genre outside of maybe old people. I will say that as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate the genre more because of it’s association with parties and other festivities. I’m not ashamed to admit I have some [José Malhoa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd3Oxh05yM4&list=RDjd3Oxh05yM4&start_radio=1) tracks saved on Spotify. It’s stupid but also fun.
> Schlagermusik is a Genre I only know from german speaking regions.
But you know of Karel Gott, don’t you?
We have many more like Helena Vondráčková, Waldemar Matuška or Václav Neckář.
And not to forget the composers like Karel Svoboda(Die Biene Maja, Drei Haselnüsse…), Jiří Zmožek(Fang das Licht) or Ladislav Štaidl.
It’s quite popular in Latvia too, named “šlāgeris” and I don’t mind it at all. When I was younger I used to “hate” it as well, but for what, really? Because older people listen to it? Because it’s generally simpler? That’s quite a pretentious view from what I figured out. I don’t have to like everything, and there’s a lot of music i’d rather prefer, but there’s no denying it has brought a lot of sing-along classics and the music or artists honestly don’t pretend they’re doing something else. Especially during the summer solstice celebration of Jāņi even parties of young people will have some local schlager in the playlists, because why not, there’s chill outside time for multiple days with friends and/or family, grilling, beer, and Latvian language music playing for a very traditional celebration, it fits together very well.
I lived in German for few years and there was a bar that had a schlager room with some basic automatronics. Nightmare shit
Horrible. Full stop. Taking the piss on people. “Schwarzbraun ist die Haselnuss, schwarzbraun bin auch ich” – WTAF? To be endlessly continued through the whole Schlager thingy.
O M G
I personally find German Schlager very hit or miss; that genre has a lot of bangers, but also a lot of crap.
I like some of the older songs. 1960s/70s/80s, but I don’t like the Mallorca-drunk-people-party-music at all.
I hate hate hare it.. Many of my co workers love it. Llke last month we were hiking and at the hut all night Schlager. I couldn’t drink enough to like it.
Wildly popular in Romania during communism and the 90s. We even adapted the word! Șlagăr (same pronunciation as in German) or Șlagăre for plural.
Out of popularity now, with hardly anyone under 50 using this word. For us it meat any hit song from the pop or “muzică ușoară” genres.
Nostalgic. I associate it with Germans having a good time (from when i was a child). Skiing or at the beach.