Schlager music

Schlager (, "hit(s)") is a style of European popular music generally defined by catchy instrumental accompaniments to vocal pieces of pop music with simple, easygoing, and often sentimental lyrics.

thumb|right|[[Michelle (German singer)|Michelle performing in Berlin, 15 March 2017, where she sang schlagers as well as ballads]]

Schlager tracks are typically light pop tunes or sweet, sentimental ballads with simple, catchy melodies. Their lyrics typically center on love, relationships, and feelings. The northern variant of schlager (notably in Finland) has taken elements from Finnic, Nordic, Slavic, and Eastern European folk songs, with lyrics tending toward melancholic and elegiac themes. Musically, schlager bears similarities to styles such as easy listening.

The style was frequently represented in the early years of the Eurovision Song Contest but has since been replaced by other pop music styles. Hebrew, and Romanian, for example), where it retained its meaning of a hit".

Central Europe

right|thumb|Austrian singer and presenter [[Andy Borg and Swiss singer Francine Jordi]]

The roots of German schlager are old. Originally, the word meant a hit or a strike. The first use of the word applied to music, in its original meaning, was in an opening night critique in the newspaper Wiener Fremden-Blatt on 17 February 1867 about The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II.

One ancestor of schlager music in its current meaning may be the operetta, which was highly popular in the early twentieth century. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Comedian Harmonists and Rudi Schuricke laid the foundations for this new music. Well-known schlager singers of the 1940s, 50s and early 60s include Lale Andersen, Freddy Quinn, Ivo Robić, Gerhard Wendland, Caterina Valente, Margot Eskens and Conny Froboess. Schlager reached a peak of popularity in Germany and Austria in the 1960s (featuring Peter Alexander and Roy Black) and the early 1970s. From the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, schlager also saw an extensive revival in Germany by, for example, Guildo Horn,

In Hamburg in the 2010s, Schlager fans still gathered annually by the hundreds of thousands, dressing in 1970s clothing for street parades called "Schlager Move". The Schlager Move designation is also used for a number of smaller schlager music parties in several major German cities throughout the year. (This revival is sometimes associated with kitsch and camp.) In the meantime, private radio has brought Schlager back to the radio. Schlager Radio is a station that broadcasts its program terrestrially in Germany via transmission towers on both FM and DAB+.

Stylistically, schlager continues to influence German "party pop" or "party-schlager" (e.g. "Layla", 2022): that is, music most often heard in après-ski bars and Mallorcan mass discos. Contemporary schlager is often mingled with Volkstümliche Musik. If it is not part of an ironic kitsch revival, a taste for both styles of music is commonly associated with folksy pubs, fun fairs, and bowling league venues. In the English-speaking world, the most popular group to have included elements of schlager in their style is probably ABBA, a band that mixed traditional Swedish music, schlager, and pop-rock to create their own sound.

Schlager music

Central Europe

See also

References

External links