26 April 1986
My memory of the night is hazy. However, I’m pretty sure I was at a college party where as a party piece someone stood by the fireplace, propped their elbow on the mantelpiece in time-honoured come-all-ye style, but instead of some dreary ballad gave us a full-on rendition of ‘Rock Me Amadeus’. It’s not the sort of thing one forgets.
I’d wager that even in 1986 the wider world probably didn’t know it needed a Euro-pop rap in German by some Austrian jumping on the bandwagon of an Oscar-winning movie, with a video of him in full Mozart get-up while heavy metal biker dudes punch the air and chant “Amadeus Amadeus! Amadeus!” But here we are. If ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ by Falco were to be taken away from us now we’d miss it terribly. It’s a smashing record.
My level of German isn’t great but still suffices for understanding a lot of the lyrics, which should tell you that none of this is particularly deep; “Er war Superstar / er war populär” pretty much translates itself. (You can also pick out fragments of English, like “No plastic money anymore”.) As my Falco-referencing party-goer showed, far from being a barrier, the language difference adds to the charm; turns out the hard consonants and Kraftwerk-ian starkness of the German language fit perfectly for rap, albeit a playful one about Mozart being a rock star. Falco’s own gleeful performance, both haughty and jerky, underlines the essence of ‘Rock Me Amadeus’, something we can also find in ’80s Prince but worth remembering as we head into the peak years of U2-ism: a great record can be cool and also fun.
