ESC Covers always thought THE WINDOWS were the German equivalent of the Dutch duo MOUTH & MACNEAL. They were active the same time and Windows even covered their song “How do you do”. This song was composed by Ralph Siegel for them. Thanks for the help of Mike Howell we now could add the Afrikaans cover by Kobu & Hannelie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8FzmcVu_GM
One of the favourite Ralph songs of ESC Covers – this kind of anthem song should have been used at Eurovision.
Interesting to see all who are part of HELPING HANDS.
It is probably not so well-known that Ralph wrote several songs for the Bellamy brothers – among them
1 – our love is like Christmas
2 – neon cowboy
3 – on a summernight
4 – nobody’s perfect
5 – merry Christmas and a happy New Year
ESC Covers selected the last one since we are at the end of 2017 and we wish all our readers a fantastic 2018.
Chris Roberts passed away this year but in the 70’s he was one of the most successful Schlager singers in Germany – his song Do you speak English was a big hit.
It was also big hits in other languages like AFRIKAANS by Carike Keuzenkamp & Johan Stemmet many years later (1994).
It was also covered in Danish by well-known duo Keld & Hilda together with the D0nkeys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrQcEUwY9oo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogcF08YnF7c
In 1985 Wind ended 2nd in Eurovision with Fur alle and they did it again two years later with this song. Although Ralph Siegel & Bern Meinunger wrote it they entered it under other names due to the fact that there was a feeling in Germany that they write too many songs – and then it ended up winning the German selection and then they revealed it was again Ralph & Bernd. The song has been covered several times with the best covers being in Dutch.
Mannequin was a selection song from 1981 and came second to Johnny blue that year (also a Ralph Siegel) song. The Hornettes had several releases but this song was probably their biggest hit.
ESC Covers has almost 600 songs composed by Ralph Siegel from Germany. We have decided to look at the 100 most interesting songs in the next 100 days. The songs have been picked at random. We start off with a huge hit for Dschinghis khan called Moskau – pity he did not write one called Lisbon – we do hope that maybe Ralph will make it to Lisbon with a song for some country.
Due to Roy van der Merwe, of ESC Covers being away Saturday judging at Carnival city, he was unable to post this then. Saturday was the birthday of Ralph Siegel, the most influential person in Eurovision for him. Here is a photo of them together in Kyiv in May. We hope he had a great birthday yesterday and it will be lovely to see him again in Lisbon next year.
The composer page is a very long term project and I have started with Ralph Siegel but he had done most of his best work with Bernd Meinunger doing the lyrics, so I have started to add him as well. But Bernd has written probably the most lyrics in the history of anybody – even outside of Eurovision and I will also list all those songs where he did lyrics to songs written by other composers. Bernd once said he has done lyrics for the entire alphabet, from singers starting with A to singers ending with Z. Hopefully some of you will also go and look at what is available so far of Bernd and celebrate with probably the best composer pair EUROVISION has ever seen.
The Ralph Siegel song index in the library section of the website was created 3 days ago and already it contains songs by 88 artists and a total of 223 songs/versions. Ralph has registered around 2000 songs so this can still grow a lot, but it is important to go through the CD’s one by one to make sure they are all listed. Hopefully it will be even more comprehensive by the time Eurovision in Vienna starts. I will later call for lovers of his music to tell me if there are songs missing which we can add.