1979 Germany: Dschinghis Khan - Dschinghis Khan (4th place at Eurovision Song Contest in Jerusalem)

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Description

Performed by: Dschinghis Khan
Music by: Ralph Siegel
Lyrics by: Bernd Meinunger
Conductor: Norbert Daum
Language: German
Placing: 4th (86 points)
Other versions: English


The German entry from '79 was written and composed by the prolific duo of Ralph Siegel and Bernd Meinunger, and owes a considerable debt to disco music, specifically of the Boney Mtradition. As the name suggests, it is in praise of the titular Mongol warrior, with verses extolling his military ("And about his enemies he only laughed/Because nobody could resist his strength") and sexual ("And each woman, that he liked/He took into his tent/They said, a woman who did not love him/Did not exist anywhere in the world/He fathered seven children in one night") prowess. Indeed, the entirety of his band are the subjects of this paean, being described as exceptional drinkers with a devil-may-care attitude to life ("And the devil gets us early enough").

The performance is in a similarly flamboyant style, with one member of the band (Louis Hendrik Potgieter) dressed as a caricature of the warlord himself and capering about the stage, seducing the female members of the band and laughing as appropriate.

The song makes many appearances in medleys and best-of collections of the Contest. As an example of the latter, it was featured prominently on the commemorative CDs produced to coincide with the "Congratulations" special in late 2005. Prior to the 2006 Contest, it was performed as part of a medley — one of only two non-winning songs to earn this honour.
It was succeeded as German representative at the 1980 Contest by Katja Ebstein with "Theater".
The song was also used at the end of Peelander-Z's live shows. The band would dance to it before going offstage. It has since been replaced in their routine. On a live DVD of one of their shows, the song was replaced with an original track, presumably for copyright reasons.

The song was played at Madison Square Garden for New York Rangers winger Petr Průcha during his tenure with the New York Rangers. The crowd would chant PRU-CHA in reference to the song.
The song was a show-stopping number in the middle of a 1979 German sex comedy film called Sunnyboy und Sugarbaby, a film which received a lot of late-night airplay in the early days of HBO under its English-language title, She's 19 and Ready. The film's characters go to a disco club, dancing to what is presented to be a live performance by the band, although the band and the actors are not seen together in the clips. Video on YouTube. It was covered by Grup Vitamin, Turkish parody music group as "Hayriye" in "Aşkın Gözyaşları" (Tears of Love), which was their 1994 album.
The song was also the entrance music of professional wrestler Uhaa Nation. The song had a lasting success in Japan. In 2014 it was certified gold for 100,000 digital downloads, after first being released digitally in 2006.

The only native Germans in the group were the bald-headed Karl-Heinz "Steve" Bender, and Wolfgang Heichel, who brought his Dutch-born wife Henriette (née Strobel) with him. Louis Hendrik Potgieter, the impersonator of Genghis Khan, was South African. Edina Pop (Marika Késmárky) was a Hungarian who had started her singing career in West Germany in 1969. Leslie Mándoki, also Hungarian, had left Hungary in 1975.

In 1979, the band released the single "Moskau". In 1980, its English-language version topped the charts in Australia for six weeks largely thanks to Seven Network using the song as the theme music for coverage of the 1980 Summer Olympics. The Australian single was issued in a die-cut Channel 7 sleeve.

In an interview with Russian television presenter Alexandra Glotova, the producer of the group Dschinghis Khan, Heinz Gross, said that in the 1980s, the band was forbidden in the Soviet Union and was accused of anti-communism and nationalism.

The group broke up in 1984 but 1986 saw a brief reunion as Dschinghis Khan Family. Only Henriette Heichel (vocals), Leslie Mándoki (drums) and Louis Potgieter (keyboards) returned from the original lineup. The song "Wir gehör'n zusammen" led them to a national qualifying round of the Eurovision Song Contest, where they finished in second place.

In 2018, they re-recorded their song "Moskau" with producer Ralph Siegel and singers Jay Khan, Alexander Malinin and Ustinya Malinin, Jorge Jiménez & Marifer Medrano for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. In 2019, the Wolfgang Heichel-led version of the band will be performing a concert in Mongolia, the birthplace of the original Genghis Khan.

You can watch the 1986 preselection performance of "Wir gehör'n zusammen" here:

https://youtu.be/vN4aPbfFoBc?t=1170