top ten
Half-year charts: Rammstein’s “Zeit” at the top
Nobody can get past Rammstein. Photo: Malte Krudewig/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The most successful music albums in Germany in 2022 so far come from local rockers. In contrast, an English band ends up at the top of the six-month singles charts.
A pop song released two years ago is the previous hit of 2022 in the official German charts.
The poetic song “Heat Waves” by the British indie rock band Glass Animals took first place in the half-yearly evaluation (i.e. the first 26 weeks), as announced by GfK Entertainment. Not surprisingly, the brute rockers from Rammstein made it to first place on the albums list.
“In the album half-year charts, there is no way around Rammstein given the more than 160,000 sales within the first seven days alone and four number one weeks to date,” explained GfK Entertainment in Baden-Baden. “Your new long player “Zeit” prevails in a rock three-way battle against Die Toten Hosen (“Everything out of love: 40 years of Die Toten Hosen”, two) and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (“Unlimited Love”, three).”
More than 60 weeks in the charts
Unusually, the hit single “Heat Waves” has already been in the German charts for more than 60 weeks. He was never number one, but number two for nine weeks. It was also the theme song for the computer game “FIFA 21”.
In the lyrics, the song with electro and hip-hop elements revolves around the melancholy after the end of a relationship – with lines that read in German: “Sometimes I only think of you / Late at night in mid-June” or “You need a better life than this/You need something that I can never give you». Another issue is that you can never really please everyone.
The song comes from the Summer 2020 Glass Animals album “Dreamland”. It was written by singer and guitarist Dave Bayley. Born in the USA, Bayley came to Oxford as a teenager, where he met the other members of the band Glass Animals. The band formed in 2012.
In the music video made from cell phone footage, Bayley pulls through the streets of London in a handcart loaded with monitors. In the end you are on the stage of an empty hall, the other band musicians can be seen on monitors – an allusion to the 2020 concert bans during the corona pandemic.
Review 2021
Last year, the sea shanty “Wellerman” by the Scotsman Nathan Evans was voted half-year hit and later also Germany’s hit of the year.
In terms of albums, the rapper Kontra K came first in the half-yearly charts with his album “Aus dem Licht in den Schatten zurück”. The comeback album “Voyage” by the Swedish cult band Abba later topped the annual charts.
Abba still barely made it into the top ten in the 2022 half-year charts – in tenth place.