“Der Kommissar” by Falco

"Der Kommissar" is the song Austria's Falco recorded in 1981 and later placed on his 1982 album Einzelhaft. Producer Robert Ponger wrote the music with someone else in mind: Reinhold Bilgeri, who passed on it as too soft. Falco took the half-mixed instrumental and laid his own words over it, and the result topped the charts in country after country across Europe.

Falco himself wasn't sold on it as the A-side. Ponger had borrowed its hook from the bass line of Rick James' "Super Freak", which had come out earlier that year, and Falco worried the likeness was too close, preferring "Helden von heute" up front. The record company overruled him, and it's hard to argue with them now. Ponger co-produced with Falco and engineered the track.

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