“Der Kommissar” by After The Fire

After the Fire took "Der Kommissar", a German-language hit for the Austrian singer Falco, and turned it into English in 1982, and in plenty of countries their version went further than his ever did. The music belongs to producer Robert Ponger, who first built the track for another singer, Reinhold Bilgeri; when Bilgeri turned it down as too soft, Falco wrote his own words over the half-finished backing, and the credit still reads Ponger and Falco. In After the Fire's hands it comes across clipped and cool, the Austrian swagger translated but never tamed.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.