Schlager music is a style of popular music that is generally a catchy instrumental accompaniment to vocal pieces of pop music with simple, happy-go-lucky, and often sentimental lyrics. It is prevalent in Central and Northern Europe, and Southeast Europe (in particular Germany, Austria, Albania, Bulgaria, Finland, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and the Baltic States), and also (to a lesser extent) in France, Belgium, Netherlands, and the UK. In the United States it is also known as 'entertainer music' or 'German hit mix'.
Typical schlager tracks are either sweet, sentimental ballads with a simple, catchy melody or light pop tunes. Lyrics typically center on love, relationships, and feelings. The northern variant of schlager (notably in Finland) has taken elements from Nordic and Slavic folk songs, with lyrics tending towards melancholic and elegiac themes. Musically, schlager bears similarities to styles such as easy listening.
The German word Schlager (itself a calque of the English word hit) is also a loanword in some other languages (Hungarian, Lithuanian, Russian, Hebrew, Romanian, for example), where it retained its meaning of a "(musical) hit". The style has been frequently represented at the Eurovision Song Contest and has been popular since the contest began in 1956, although it is gradually being replaced by other pop music styles.
Over time, schlager music has gradually shifted on to electronic music rather than generic pop music, due to its widespread use of synthesizers throughout its various implementations in recent decades.
Germany and Austria
The roots of German schlager are old: the word refers to songs by Heinz Rühmann and other singing movie stars of the 1930s. One ancestor of schlager may be 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 1950s and early 1960s 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,Dieter Thomas Kuhn, Michelle and Petra Perle. Dance clubs would play a stretch of schlager titles during the course of an evening, and numerous new bands were formed specialising in 1970s schlager cover versions and newer material. 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.)
Germans view schlager as their country music, and American country and Tex-Mex music are both major elements in schlager culture. ("Is This the Way to Amarillo" is regularly played in schlager contexts, usually in the English-language original.)
Popular schlager singers include Michael Wendler, Roland Kaiser, Hansi Hinterseer, Jürgen Drews, Andrea Berg, Heintje Simons, Helene Fischer, Nicole, Claudia Jung, Andrea Jürgens, Michelle, Kristina Bach, Marianne Rosenberg, Simone Stelzer, Christian Lais, Semino Rossi, Vicky Leandros, Leonard, DJ Ötzi, and Andreas Gabalier, who was voted best schlager singer in 2012. Stylistically, schlager continues to influence German "party pop": that is, music most often heard in après-ski bars and Majorcan 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.
Between 1975 and 1981 German-style schlager became disco-oriented, in many ways merging with the mainstream disco music of the time. Singers such as Marianne Rosenberg recorded both schlager and disco hits. The song "Moskau" by German band Dschinghis Khan was one of the earliest of modern, dance-based schlager, again showing how schlager of the '70s and early '80s merged with mainstream disco and Euro-disco. Dschinghis Khan, while primarily a disco band, also played disco-influenced schlager.
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