Music: Hundreds of thousands listen to new Udo Jürgens song

Within a few days, hundreds of thousands of people have listened to Udo Jürgens’ song, which was only released after about 40 years. The popular singer and composer died almost ten years ago at the age of 80.

On YouTube alone, the music video for the song “Als ich fortging”, shot in black and white and featuring actor Albrecht Schuch (“All Quiet on the Western Front”, “Systemsprenger”), had been viewed around 250,000 times by Sunday afternoon.

“Als ich fortging” was released on Friday. It is also a bonus track on the album “Udo 90”, which will be released on September 27th, three days before Udo Jürgens’ 90th birthday. The star died on December 21st, 2014 while out for a walk.

The romantic piano ballad “Als ich fortging” was discovered while working in the archives of a record label. The rediscovered song tells of a wistful farewell and at the same time seems like a late, perhaps too late, request for reconciliation.

Text is by cult lyricist Kunze

The lyrics are by Michael Kunze (80), who also contributed the words to Jürgens hits such as “Griechischer Wein” and “Ich war noch niemals in New York”.

Jürgens wrote the melody in the 80s and recorded a demo version. The song was created in 1985 for the album “Treibjagd”, but in the end it didn’t fit into the concept and ended up in the archives.

Demo recording is rearranged

Drummer and producer Curt Cress extracted Jürgens’ vocals from the demo tape and added a piano part and a broad cloud of strings. Some people think of parts of the song as a James Bond song.