Boney M.
| Boney M. | |
|---|---|
 Boney M., 1981 |
|
| General information | |
| origin | Federal Republic of Germany |
| Genre (s) | Euro disco |
| founding | 1974 |
Boney M. is a disco formation produced by Frank Farian , which had international success, especially in the 1970s, with pieces such as Daddy Cool , Rivers of Babylon and Ma Baker . Boney M. has sold over 150 million records worldwide, including more than 60 million singles.
history
Beginnings
When Farian recorded the title Baby Do You Wanna Bump in December 1974 at the Europa Sound Studio in Offenbach with a deep, studio manipulated voice and high falsetto phases , he did not want to publish it under his own name. The single was released in February 1975 with the label Boney M. as an artist and sold about 500 times a week. He named the project after the Australian crime series Boney , which he often saw on television at the time. There was no photo of the group on their cover yet. Only then did Farian find a motley troupe through the Katja Wolfe artist agency.
There was high staff turnover in 1975 when Sheila Bonnick, Mike, Nathalie and Claudja Barry came and went. Stability did not begin until February 1976 when the formation was composed of Bobby Farrell , Maizie Williams , Marcia Barrett and Liz Mitchell . All of them were born in the Caribbean and came to Europe as children or adolescents. Only Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett passed the singing tests in the studio. As Farian confirmed in the youth magazine Bravo , Maizie Williams did not sing in the studio either, "because her voice was not suitable for this type of music". Vocal and instrumental help was given by studio musicians (such as Kurt “Supermax” Hauenstein ). They only sang their hits when they performed live. The voiced weak troupe appeared in daring costumes and had to improve their moderate choreography.
After the staff was constant, Farian was able to start recording the debut album Take the Heat Off Me . The single Daddy Cool was released on May 31, 1976 as an early release from this album and initially received no particular response. Farian finally managed to accommodate the inexperienced group in the 28th episode of the music show Musikladen on September 18, 1976 alongside Dave Edmunds or Edwin Starr . Here they presented Daddy Cool , also on September 20, 1976 in the third episode of the record kitchen . After these performances, 100,000 copies of the title were sold per week.
Career
Daddy Cool was number one in Germany for twelve weeks and sixth in the UK. With a total of 800,000 copies sold, it was the most commercially successful single in Germany in 1976; over a million units were sold worldwide. On June 28, 1976, the first LP Take the Heat Off Me came on the market, which was sold 200,000 times in Germany alone. When Boney M. appeared on the TV New Year's Eve show Now the party really started on December 31, 1976 , the group had already received their first gold record for Daddy Cool on December 11, 1976 .
The single Sunny was released on November 22, 1976 and reached the top position in Germany on January 24, 1977 , which it held for 2 weeks. The single Ma Baker was released on May 2, 1977 simultaneously with the LP Love For Sale . Also Belfast (composers were Dorco German , Joe Menke and Jimmy Bilsbury ) reached after the release on September 19, 1977 as Sunny and Ma Baker first place in the German charts.
The troupe's greatest success came on April 3, 1978 with Rivers of Babylon on the market. After four weeks, over a million copies had been sold in Germany alone, a total of over 500,000 units were sold in France and 1.985 million in Great Britain. Over 4.035 million units have been sold worldwide. The title was her biggest hit and was number one on the German hit list for four months .
It was followed by Rasputin on August 28, 1978, then the Christmas carol Mary's Boy Child on November 27, 1978. Over 220,000 copies of this were sold in one day in Great Britain, after three weeks the million mark was exceeded there due to its special status as a Christmas number -one hit , sales totaled 1.79 million copies. In Germany, the million mark was also reached after three weeks, 17 pressing plants in four countries tried to cope with the demand. It was the group's second biggest success. The LP Nightflight to Venus , released on July 28, 1978, also developed into a sales success, as one million units had been sold by January 1979. With the album, which was the only LP by Boney M. to be listed in the US charts , the gradual move away from the traditional disco sound to catchy pop succeeded .
Her fourth album Oceans of Fantasy from September 21, 1979 contained the hits El Lute and I'm Born Again . After the album Boonoonoonoos , which appeared on November 1, 1981 , Farrell was dismissed due to his unreliable work discipline (although the Christmas album from November 23, 1981 still shows his picture), so that no convincing doctoral thesis could be delivered for the LP. In early 1982 came the replacement of the London singer Reggie Tsiboe, who was also allowed to sing. With Going Back West 1982 and Jambo 1983, Boney M. achieved top 50 placements, but made it into the top 10 in the Republic of South Africa and with both singles in 11th place in Switzerland.
On May 5, 1984, Boney M. delivered with the album Ten Thousand Lightyears the thematic return to space and conceptual connection to the success of the album Nightflight to Venus . In addition to the theme song Future World , Somewhere in the World and Where Did You Go , the remakes by Jimmy (the original is from her own album Boonoonoonoos ) and Tommy Roes Dizzy should be mentioned here. In the same year Boney M. reappeared in the top 20 of the charts: with adaptations of the Italian disco hits Kalimba de Luna September 1984 (sold 1 million times worldwide) and the happy song . In the latter hit, released in November 1984, Bobby Farrell had also returned. The last album Eye Dance from October 1985 was even released as a quintet, but without being able to continue anywhere near the early successes. At that time, Farian lost interest in the group; after almost ten years, Boney M. finally fell apart in 1986.
Scandals and controversy
The 1977 cover photo of the album Love for Sale , on which the members of Boney M. pose almost naked, caused a stir . Bobby Farrell is with anything else dressed as a necklace with tiger claw and one of silver sequins existing G-string . The three singers lie naked at his feet and are tied up with huge link chains. Even the cover of the previous album Take the Heat Off Me was very daring for the time: Here Farrell looks from the background at the singers, who are clad in light lace underwear and lying on the floor, who - more or less wrapped in dry ice - huddle together . The photos were taken in the studio of the photographer Didi Zill .
In contrast to the scandal in 1990 about the group Milli Vanilli , which was also produced by Frank Farian, Boney M. never made a big secret of whose voices were actually heard on the records. Lead dancer Bobby Farrell was only allowed to move his lips to Farian's voice on stage. Only lead singer Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett were actually present at the vocal recordings in the studio in Offenbach-Bieber .
Boney M. today
In different remix versions and riding on different retro waves, some old hits appeared in a new guise in the later 1980s. Among other things, Stock Aitken Waterman mixed a fresher sound from the classics. In 1988, Boney M. came with the Megamix belonging to the album Greatest Hits of All Times in 1988 at number 1 on the French charts.
In 1989, Bobby Farrell, Maizie Williams, Marcia Barrett and Madeleine Davis (instead of Liz Mitchell) published the single Everybody Wants to Dance Like Josephine Baker without Frank Farian and used the name Boney M. without his permission, which is why the pressings already delivered had to be taken off the shelves of record stores in Germany. In France, the single was released under the title Bobby Marcia Maizie Matalyne .
Today there are - after various legal disputes - several groups that appear under the name "Boney M.", and almost all former members can be booked for performances with the songs of Boney M. Officially, however, only “Boney M. feat. Liz Mitchell ”from Farian. However, in 2010 a court in Hamburg ruled that every original member of the group with the name suffix “Boney M.” may appear.
On the occasion of the band's 30th anniversary, the album The Magic of Boney M. was released in October 2006 , which also contains a new title, sung by Liz Mitchell. The album made it into the top 20 of the album charts, a DVD of the same name was released at the end of 2006. Boney M. feat. Liz Mitchell went on a concert tour in Germany in autumn / winter 2007.
In January 2009 Frank Farian released a new single by the group called Felicidad America (Obama Obama) under the project name Boney M. feat. Sherita O. & Yulee B. The song is a new recording of the Boney-M. hit from 1980, re-recorded and rewritten, thematically referring to the new US President Barack Obama . Only the name reminds of Boney M., since no member of the original formation sang along.
At the end of 2010, Barbra Streisand released a single produced by Duck Sauce based on the Boney M. song Gotta Go Home . Gotta Go Home, on the other hand, is a disco cover version of the song Hallo Bimmelbahn by the German- singing group Nighttrain , which was released in 1973.
On December 30, 2010, Bobby Farrell died at the age of 61. In the summer of 2011, the single Sunny reached first place on the South Korean charts after the song was used in the comedy of the same name by Kang Hyeong-Cheol.
In February 2014, a Boney M featuring Maizie Williams tour in Australia was announced for June of that year. For the 40th anniversary, the album Boney M. Diamonds was released in March 2015 . In addition to a chronological compilation of the singles since 1976, there are also two new songs and a number of remixes on the album. In November 2017 the album Worldmusic for Christmas was released , a compilation of well-known melodies in a Christmas guise.
Song material
Some of the texts by Frank Farian and his middle exteriors (including Drafi Deutscher , Fred Jay and George Reyam) have a historical or political background. Belfast is about the Northern Ireland conflict and the impact of the civil war on the children of this city. The Melodians Cover Rivers of Babylon is the setting of several passages of the Bible ( Psalm 137 ) and - like Plantation Boy - the discussion about slavery and oppression of blacks. We Kill the World (a number one hit in South Africa in 1981 ) addresses growing environmental awareness . The eponymous characters of the hits Ma Baker , El Lute and Rasputin take up the story and the legends of the historical figures Kate “Ma” Barker , Eleuterio Sánchez Rodríguez and Grigori Jefimowitsch Rasputin . Finally, with Mary's Boy Child , they achieved great commercial success in 1978 with an often covered Christmas carol.
Awards and Achievements
Boney M. had a total of eight number one hits in Germany and two in Great Britain from 1976 to 1979 . The quartet was the first pop group in a long time to be received by Queen Elizabeth II , who she dubbed “the most successful pop group in England in 1978”. In the Soviet Union, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev personally gave Boney M. permission in the same year to be the first Western group to give ten concerts in the Soviet Union. During the tour, Boney M. danced with the accompanying group Black Beautiful Circus in front of about 2,700 spectators on Red Square in Moscow.
In Great Britain, two Boney-M. singles are on the list of the ten best-selling records of all time, namely Rivers of Babylon at number 5 (1.985 million) and Mary's Boychild / Oh My Lord at number 10 (1.79 million). Boney M. has sold over 150 million records worldwide, including more than 60 million singles. The group received 50 platinum records as well as 42 gold and 50 silver records over the years.
- Golden Europe 1977, 1981
- Golden tuning fork 1983
- RSH Gold 1990
For more awards, see Awards for Music Sales
Musical Daddy Cool
On September 21, 2006, the musical Daddy Cool, based on the hits by Frank Farian, started in London . In addition to the Boney M. songs, you can also hear songs that Farian wrote for No Mercy , Milli Vanilli and La Bouche . The members of the original group included Liz Mitchell, Marcia Barrett and Reggie Tsiboe at the premiere. In 2007, on the occasion of the start of the Daddy Cool musical in Germany, all of Boney M.'s original albums were reissued in Remastered Editions, supplemented by bonus tracks.
Discography
Studio albums
| year | title |
Top ranking, total weeks / months, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks / months, awards, notes) |
Remarks | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 DE
|
 AT
|
 CH
|
 UK
|
 US
|
|||
| 1976 | Take the Heat Off Me |
DE2  (13 months)DE |
AT6 (9 months) AT |
- |
UK40  (5 weeks)UK |
- |
First published: June 1976
Sales: + 496,000 |
| 1977 | Love for sale |
DE1  (15½ months)DE |
AT1 (10 months) AT |
- |
UK13 (10 weeks)UK |
- |
First published: May 1977
Sales: + 646,000 |
| 1978 | Nightflight to Venus |
DE1 (61 weeks)DE |
AT1 (9 months) AT |
- |
UK1 (65 weeks)UK |
US134 (10 weeks) US |
First published: April 1978
Sales: + 1,970,000 |
| 1979 | Oceans of Fantasy |
DE1 (37 weeks)DE |
AT1 (4½ months) AT |
- |
UK1 (18 weeks)UK |
- |
First published: September 1979
Sales: + 1,046,000 |
| 1981 | Boonoonoonoos |
DE15 (18 weeks) DE |
AT14 (½ month) AT |
- | - | - |
First published: September 1, 1981
Sales: + 110,000 |
| 1984 | Ten Thousand Lightyears |
DE23 (14 weeks) DE |
- | - | - | - |
First published: February 1984
|
| 1985 | Eye dance | - | - | - | - | - |
First published: October 1985
|
gray hatching : no chart data available for this year
literature
- Didi Zill , Frank Farian , Christian Hentschel : Boney M. Live on Tour - at Home - Studio - Backstage. Photos 1977-1982 . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-89602-695-X .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Europeantalent ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ rainbow-entertainment.com ( Memento of the original dated November 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Frank Farian talks about the song Baby, Do You Wanna Bump? Retrieved March 7, 2020 .
- ↑ John Shearlaw, David Brown: Boney M. Hamlin Paperbacks . Feltham 1979, ISBN 0-600-20009-4 , pp. 35-6 .
- ^ Colin Larkin , The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music , 1993, p. 168
- ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 412
- ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 452
- ^ Volume Boney M. - Bobby Farrell is dead. Sueddeutsche.de on December 30, 2010
- ^ Boney M on the Enmore Theater Sydney website
- ↑ Boney M tickets, tour and event information on ticketek.com.au
- ^ Farian friend Hans-Jörg Mayer; his surname written backwards
- ↑ Bestselling Singles in the UK ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The Europeantalent ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ rainbow-entertainment.com ( Memento of the original dated November 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
