DJ BoBo - "Vampires Are Alive" (2007 Yes Music)
w Peter René Baumann, Axel Breitung; from Vampires, Yes Music – YES 2018
At last we come to the end of so-called Spooky Season and enter Halloween proper, starting with the holiest of unholy nights, Halloween Eve - a superior holiday to the 31st all around, because if you stay up 'til two or three in the morning on Halloween Eve it's still Halloween, instead of, like...Wednesday...
But I have to digress. Just like Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes or Christmas without TV specials, Halloween would be a somber, specious affair without some perennially kitschy "novelty" songs to define the season at the stroke of midnight on October 1st. And what's more kitschy or perennial than Eurovision, the annual European Olympics of "songing" where the bad is good and the Wurst is the best?
"Vampires Are Alive" was Switzerland's entry in Eurovision 2007, performed and co-written by native son Peter René Baumann AKA DJ BoBo (apparently Céline Dion won Eurovision for Switzerland in 1988 despite being Canadian). The song did not win or make it to the finals, despite being significantly above average for Eurovision, what with the Star Wars horns and DJ BoBo and the Switzerland contingent giving a great live performance:
Not to mention the progressive message. Maybe metaphorical? Or maybe it's just really about vampires....in any case, it seems Baumann was able to get an entire concept album out of the Vampires theme and enjoyed a degree of success with it and with his subsequent recording work, which work has continued to the present day. And he'd already enjoyed his greatest success over a decade prior to "Vampires Are Alive", starting with his #1 Swiss hit, the very catchy "Somebody Dance With Me" (based on the familiar "Somebody's Watching Me", another good one for Halloween...):
Good or so-bad-it's-good, hopefully "Vampires Are Alive" helps breaks up some of your Halloween music monotony (I got sick of all my favorites by the 2nd this year...). Below are a few more vampiric tracks to occupy you until the high holiday season, but before that I'd be remiss to go another post about Eurovision without highlighting the "Song-A-Long" from the Will Ferrell Eurovision movie, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. The fantasmic medley of Cher's "Believe", ABBA's "Waterloo", and more dance hits featuring Conchita Wurst from above, Alexander Rybak, and a bunch of other Eurovision legends is as unmissable as the rest of the film is unwatchable...
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