Die Lieder von Falco

[Loaf Warden]

Okay, apologies for putting the title of this thread in German. I confess I did it to attract the attention of the German-speakers. But even if you personally do not speak German, you're still welcome in this thread if you have something you wish to say about Falco. I have no desire to be exclusive here. Any discussion about Falco is encouraged.

I have some questions about his music, and I was hoping that maybe there are a few German-speakers here who are fans of his and know enough about his music to answer them. If you all think he sucks and that I'm hopelessly out-of-date by listening to him, and that I should devote my time instead to Rammstein or Fantastischen Vier (or whatever), then no big deal. I'll try to find answers elsewhere.

See, I studied German for two years in high school, but had to stop because the third-year German class was cancelled the year I would have gone into it. There weren't enough people from second-year German interested in continuing for the school to be able to justify giving those of us who were an entire class. The result of all this is that I know a little German, but not enough to, say, have an intelligent conversation in it. I have every intention of learning German to fluency someday, but at the moment that day has not yet come. So I'm a little stuck trying to figure out what some of Falco's songs are about. That's what I've come here to ask, and if anyone can give answers to any of these, then I would be grateful.

I have only been able to find one Falco album in the music stores of my state. It's a greatest hits collection. I confess I bought it for "Rock Me Amadeus" and "Der Kommissar", but listening to it I quickly learned that he had better stuff, and it is some of the other songs I'm asking about.

Jeanny
Who is Jeanny? I have just enough command of German to gather that in this song, the singer and Jeanny are in a forest (literal? figurative?), and that they must leave, because someone is looking for Jeanny. Who is looking for her, and why? And something horrible seems to have happened in the "Newsflash" section. Was Jeanny shot? By the police, perhaps?

America
What's the point of this song? Is he mocking us? Should I be offended?

Brillantin' Brutal'
Is this song about a dance, or have I just completely missed the point? Does the title mean anything? Despite a superficial similarity, as far as I can tell that's not supposed to be the English word brilliant, and I can't quite bring myself to assume the other word has anything to do with our word brutal. If they do have any meaning, though, I've been unable to discover them.

Ganz Wien
The notes that came with the album say that this song was banned by Austrian radio for "accurately characterizing the atmosphere of the early eighties." I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, but judging from the chorus, it's not hard to imagine why this song might be banned from the radio. My only real question here, I guess, is what is 'Mozambin'? (And if I've horribly misspelled it, then what is it supposed to be?) Oh, also, is there some idiomatic meaning of 'machen uns hin' that I am just not aware of? I ask because I know what all those words mean, but I'm having trouble making sense of them in context.

 

[sysyphus]

Alles klar Herr Komissar?

I am of German blood, though Ich spreche kein Deutsch.

Actually I have rediscovered Falco just over the past couple of years. Big loss when he died.

 

[Zwelgje]

My attempt on translating Jeanny by Falco:

Jeanny, komm, come on ( Jeanny come, come on )
Steh auf - bitte, du wirst ganz naß ( Get up - please, you're getting all wet )
Schon spät, komm - wir müssen weg hier, ( It's already late, come on - we have to leave, )
raus aus dem Wald, verstehst du nicht? ( out of this forrest, don't you understand? )
Wo ist dein Schuh, du hast ihn verloren, ( Where's your shoe, you've lost it, )
als ich dir den Weg zeigen mußte ( when I had to show you the way )
Wer hat verloren? Du dich? ( who has lost? You yourself? )
Ich mich? Oder, oder wir uns? ( Me myself? Or, or us ourselves? )

Jeanny, quit livin' on dreams
Jeanny, life is not what it seems
Such a lonely little girl in a cold, cold world
There's someone who needs you
Jeanny, quit livin' on dreams
Jeanny, life is not what it seems
You're lost in the night, don't wanna struggle and fight
There's someone, who needs you, babe

Es ist kalt, wir müssen weg hier, komm ( It's cold, we have to leave, away from here, come on )
Dein Lippenstift ist verwischt ( Your lipstick is gone )
Du hast ihn gekauft und ich habe es gesehen ( You've bought it and I saw it )
Zuviel rot auf deinen Lippen und du hast gesagt: ( Too much red on your lips, you said: )
"Mach mich nicht an" ( "Don't bother me" )
Aber du warst durchschaut, Augen sagen mehr als Worte ( But you were ???, eyes say more than words )
Du brauchst mich doch, hmh? ( You need me don't you? )
Alle wissen, daß wir zusammen sind ab heute, ( Everybody knows were together from now on )
jetzt hör ich sie! Sie kommen ( now I hear them. they are coming )
Sie kommen, dich zu holen( They are coming to get you )
Sie werden dich nicht finden ( They won't find you )
Niemand wird dich finden, du bist bei mir ( Nobody will find you, you are with me )

Jeanny, quit livin' on dreams
Jeanny, life is not what it seems
Such a lonely little girl in a cold, cold world
There's someone who needs you
Jeanny, quit livin' on dreams
Jeanny, life is not what it seems
You're lost in the night, don't wanna struggle and fight
There's someone, who needs you

Newsflash: In den letzten Monaten ( Newsflash: in the past months )
ist die Zahl der vermißten Personen ( is the number of missing persons )
dramatisch angestiegen. Die jüngste ( strongly increased. The latest )
Veröffentlichung der lokalen ( news from the local )
Polizeibehörde berichtet von einem ( police talks from a new )
weiteren tragischen Fall. Es handelt ( tragic case. It's about )
sich um ein neunzehnjähriges ( a 19 year old )
Mädchen, das zuletzt vor vierzehn ( girl, seen for the last time 14 )
Tagen gesehen wurde. Die Polizei ( days ago. The police )
schließt die Möglichkeit nicht aus, daß ( won't rule out the possibility that )
es sich hier um ein Verbrechen handelt. ( this is due to a crime. )

Jeanny, quit livin' on dreams
Jeanny, life is not what it seems
Such a lonely little girl in a cold, cold world
There's someone who needs you
Jeanny, quit livin' on dreams
Jeanny, life is not what it seems
You're lost in the night, don't wanna struggle and fight
There's someone, who needs you

 

[Loaf Warden]

Thanks for the translation!

So nobody got shot, but the police are looking for Jeanny . . . not because she's a criminal, but because she's a missing person? The narrator kidnapped her? Whoa. That's even darker than I thought it was.

 

[Zwelgje]

Jeanny is a great song.
Me and my friends would always bring a tape with that song whenever we went somewhere in a car. Just cruising along that song on the stereo, us singing along as loud as we could...
It's a classic!

 

[Jayne]

Thanks for the translation Civ1!! I don't suppose you want to do that for all his songs do you?

I love Falco. I wish I knew what they all meant. Though I must admit Jeanny sounds better in German than English!!!

 

[Zwelgje]

I'm definately not willing to translate all his songs!
However the translation of this took me about 5 minutes so it wasn't such a big effort at all.

 

[Loaf Warden]

Originally posted by Jayne
\Though I must admit Jeanny sounds better in German than English!!!

In my experience, that's the case with most songs that are translated from one language into another. The English-language version of "Der Kommissar" was utter crap; from what I've heard, even Falco hated it.

 

[sysyphus]

Originally posted by Loaf Warden


In my experience, that's the case with most songs that are translated from one language into another. The English-language version of "Der Kommissar" was utter crap; from what I've heard, even Falco hated it.

I agree that the English "Der Kommissar" was awful, but it may also have to do with the musical rearangement as well. Still, singing in German sounds better. I only have the German versions of all my Kraftwerk albums, and intened to keep it that way!

I wish more bands whose first language wasn't English would do their songs in their native tongue. I love Sigur Ros.

 

[Ren]

Try Google's translation, it isn't perfect in accuracy but it should give you a good idea of what the words mean There are other translators around but that's the one I know and use.

 

[Loaf Warden]

Originally posted by sysyphus
I wish more bands whose first language wasn't English would do their songs in their native tongue.

Agreed. Don't get me wrong; I love English. It's my native tongue, and I'm proud of that. But I have a hard time understanding why pop culture in countries where it is not a native language keep making so much use of it. Even Falco had a very strong tendency to throw English into his songs, and give English titles to primarily German-language songs. (For example, "Rock Me Amadeus", "Vienna Calling", and "Munich Girls" come to mind.)

(And don't even get me started on what some Japanese songwriters do. At least Falco's English generally made sense. But listening to Japanese music, I've never been able to make any sense of lines like "Don't forget to try in mind" or "Mister myself" or "I wish if I could see the light of heaven / I don't know color of sea, but there's no reason." I'm not trying to say they're all as bad as that. Not by a long shot. Still, one can't help but feel that the songwriters who write stuff like this might have a better time of it sticking to languages they know. I could buy a Portuguese dictionary and write a song with some Portuguese words in it, but not in any way that a Portuguese listener wouldn't hurt himself laughing over. )

A number of years ago, I got to take a tour of Europe with my high school European History class. Our tour director had been raised in Germany since age 5, and had recently moved to Italy. We found out midway through the trip that he used to be with a rock band back in Germany. He wrote and sang their songs, and they released an album. He played it for us on one of the bus rides between cities, and every song was in English! He was raised German, played in a German band with a bunch of Germans, and he wrote his songs in English! Naturally, I asked him why he hadn't written them in German, and he told me that he felt English to be a more "poetic" language than German. (His word, not mine.) Well, maybe. I rather think "Lorelei" is quite poetic, and obviously I don't have a problem with, say, Falco. But if English is a more poetic language than German, then surely Italian is a more poetic language than English. But only half of one song on the album was in Italian, and the rest was entirely in English. He speaks fluent Italian, so if he wanted to write his songs in a highly poetic language, why didn't he choose that? Ich kann nicht das verstehen.