Udo Jürgens

Some thousand songs carry Udo Jürgens's name, and the best of them did what German-language popular music rarely attempted: they looked straight at migration, ageing, consumer appetite and loneliness while remaining entirely singable. Born Jürgen Udo Bockelmann in Klagenfurt in 1934, he studied piano and composition at the conservatory there, and his first successes came as a writer for other performers — Shirley Bassey took his Reach for the Stars into the British charts in 1961. He entered the Eurovision Song Contest three times for Austria, placing sixth in 1964 and fourth in 1965 before winning in 1966 with Merci, Chérie. Griechischer Wein, Aber bitte mit Sahne, Mit 66 Jahren and Ich war noch niemals in New York followed, the last of them eventually becoming a stage musical. Jazz, chanson and musical theatre are all audible in the arrangements, and he accompanied himself at the piano throughout a career that kept him in the charts for well over fifty years. He died in 2014.