Greek wine

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Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Singles
Greek wine
  DE 1
gold
gold
December 23, 1974 (38 weeks)
  AT 2 03/15/1975 (54 weeks)
  CH 1Template: Infobox chart placements / maintenance / NR1 link 01/24/1975 (21 weeks)

Greek wine is a hit from 1974 that Udo Jürgens composed and sang. Michael Kunze wrote the text . The producer was Ralph Siegel .

Emergence

Udo Jürgens, concert in 2010

Udo Jürgens wrote the melody after a vacation on the Greek island of Rhodes , according to his own statement in just 20 minutes. He was convinced of the success of the song right from the start, as he told the weekly newspaper Die Zeit : “I knew immediately it was going to be a blast.” He then waited two years for a suitable text. Authors initially came up with clichés - for example with the text "Sonja wake up". It was only Kunze who had the idea to let the song play in the Ruhr area : "It just had to be played in the Ruhr area, back then in the years of the first guest workers from Greece ".

content

The song describes the longing and homesickness of Greek guest workers in Germany in the 1970s. The first song self of the narrating singer enters a pub on a dark, cool evening and meets "men with brown eyes and [...] black hair". “Alien and southern” music is playing and he is invited to wine, where he learns of the homesickness and longing of men to come back from a foreign country to “green hills, sea and wind”, to wife and child . The sadness and the feeling of the second song self singing the chorus of being lonely are intensified by the wine, the “blood of the earth”, and the “familiar songs”, because here, in the city, the Greeks, that the second song self believes that they will always remain alien and alone (ie, among themselves).

Publication and Success

The song was released in 1974 both as a single and on the album Greek Wine - His New Songs . The single reached number one in Germany and Switzerland in 1975, and in Austria the highest number was number two. In Germany, Jürgens was awarded a gold record for 500,000 units sold by his music label for his success . The single version is 4:03 minutes long, on the B-side is the piece Yesterday it was love . In addition to German, Udo Jürgens also sang the song in a French ( À mes amours , 1975), a Greek ( Phile kerna krassi , 1975) and an English ( Come Share the Wine , 1980) version. Udo Jürgens and Michael Kunze were received by the Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis to express thanks for the song and the discussion of the guest worker problem . In 2020, Greek wine was voted 6th of the “100 most important Austrian pop songs” by the pop culture magazine The Gap in the AustroTOP ranking.

Cover versions

The song has been covered many times . This includes foreign language transmissions such as English, Dutch, Portuguese, Polish and Spanish. Bing Crosby ( Come Share the Wine ) and Al Martino sang the song with success. The Dutch version by Guus Meeuwis celebrates the Schrobbelèr , a herbal liqueur popular in the city of Tilburg . The Portuguese version sung by Marco Paulo pays homage to the eponymous Vinho Verde . José Vélez ( Vino Griego ) sang the song in a Spanish version that was also known in the southern French region. It is the anthem of the Bayonne rugby club (with a French and a Basque text) and is played at the various ferias in southern France. Greek wine has also been parodied and satirized on various occasions . The first version that was not meant seriously, Bottroper Bier , was sung by Jürgen von Manger in the mid-1970s. Adam and Micky’s turned it into Kriech ich en Wein in 1988 , Hape Kerkeling 2000 Greek Santa Claus , the Grindcore band Excrementory Grindfuckers 2007 Lieblicher Grind and the staff from Frühstyxradio recorded a version called Greek Beer , in which the first verse still corresponds to the original, in which the refrain is sung in Saxon dialect and the text is suggestive from the second stanza.

Other cover versions:

literature

  • Michael Behrendt: When “welcoming culture” was still a foreign word. In: ders .: I don't like Mondays. The 66 biggest song misunderstandings. Darmstadt 2017, pp. 36–39.

Individual evidence

  1. Sources chart placements: DE  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. / AT / CH , (Accessed June 26, 2010)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.musicline.de  
  2. ^ A b Günter Ehnert: Hit balance sheet - German chart singles 1956-1980 . 1st edition. Verlag popular music-literature, Norderstedt 2000, ISBN 3-922542-24-7 , p. 444 .
  3. www.hitparade.ch: Greek Wine , accessed June 26, 2010
  4. a b c Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns: The coat of history - DZ No. 27 from June 30, 2005.
  5. Ralph Siegel in The Ultimate Chart Show - The Most Successful Pop Composers of All Time (RTL, August 3, 2012, 8:15 pm).
  6. AustroTOP - The 100 most important Austrian pop songs - Page 23 of April 28 , 2020, accessed on April 23, 2020 (German).
  7. Barbara Guzińska: GRECKIE Wino ANNA GERMAN. July 10, 2013, accessed May 7, 2018 .
  8. www.coverinfo.de: Greek Wine , accessed June 26, 2010.