Tuesday, January 9, 2018

WAS's Awesome New Wave Song Of The Week #11: Edelweiss - Bring Me Edelweiss

After last week’s very traditional new wave synthpop entry "New Life", this week we shall jump to the other end of the 80s new wave spectrum !

By 1988 New Wave had peaked … the fresh, new & interesting musical releases that were previously happening constantly seemed to be petering out, and the movement was starting to morph into other things like goth, grunge, industrial, house, alternative and a bunch of other sub-genres.    However that didn’t mean that there weren’t total surprises sometimes!  In a manner reminiscent of innovative musical-fusion huckster Malcolm McLaren - who had previously marketed punk-rock (Sex Pistols), dub-scratching (Buffalo Gals) and operatic-electronica (Madame Butterfly) - an Austrian group calling themselves Edelweiss came out of nowhere and brought us into the never-heard-before world of … hip-hop-yodeling!   

“Bring Me Edelweiss” was a monster of a song that went to the highest mountaintops of the charts all over Europe and hit the North American dance charts too, but never really got mainstream attention and remained a cult hit on this side of the pond.  It’s a unique song that is like a pot-luck special of musical styles and nothing before or since sounds quite like it.  And the only thing more cuckoo than the Edelweiss song … is the Edelweiss video!   Alpenhorns, chameleon-colored cows, drunken buffoonery, massive mammaries, slapping, nose-picking, whips, an African rhythm section sporting lederhosen and a dwarf are all in there... I shit thee not.   So sit back and let’s go to the wintry mountains and enjoy the yodeling-laden one-hit wonder that is …“Bring Me Edelweiss”!
 
-WAS

7 comments:

  1. Well MD ... if you really love it ... you should bring it Edelweiss!!!
    Yo-dee-do-dee-doooooooo!

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  2. When I first heard this song I thought the lyrics were : "when you really love me, you should bring me anal vice(!)", which probably says a lot about my mindset in 1988!

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    1. Anal vice is likely how yodeling started in the first place

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  3. This is a fun song, and this group had another zany Edelweiss song that I like even more - "Raumschiff Edelweiss".

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    1. The level of WTFery this band provides is truly overwhelming

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