No campaign, no marketing: 30 years ago the musician landed a hit in Germany with “Aloha heja he”. Now the song is resurrected – in Asia.
Hamburg – musician Achim Reichel (77) landed a surprising hit in China with his song “Aloha heja he”. 30 years after its release, the shanty song is number one there on the music recognition app Shazam.
“I thought I was dreaming,” said Reichel on NDR radio when his record company congratulated him on the success. However, there is no campaign or marketing strategy behind this: “The song did it all on its own,” said the singer happily.
Background music
The Chinese version of the short video platform TikTok, on which the hit recently spread rapidly, is likely to be responsible for the popularity of the song. TikTok star “Classmate Zhang” with more than 16 million followers first published a video there in October in which he used the song as background music. Since then he has incorporated the song into other videos that have been viewed millions of times. Numerous other TikTok users also used the song in their short videos.
Curious users of Douyin, as TikTok is called in China, may have used Shazam to find out more about the popular background music, which explains the top position. In other Chinese music charts, however, “Aloha Heja He” has not yet made it to the top. dpa
