Modern Talking

The poster for the twenty-ninth edition of the Festival Internacional de la Canción de Viña del Mar, Chile's great televised song festival, held from the seventeenth to the twenty-second of February 1988, announced Modern Talking for the Friday the nineteenth. On the Saturday the twentieth the bill lists, alone, Thomas Anders. The explanation is given by the festival's own record and it is more eloquent than any review: the organisers had signed the contract with the duo before the duo broke up, at the end of 1987, so the only one who walked onto the stage of the Quinta Vergara, the amphitheatre in the city's park where the festival is held, was Anders, and he was introduced as though he were the group. Chile saw Modern Talking being half of Modern Talking. He came back the following year with no pretence, as a solo act: two nights of the thirtieth edition, Sunday the nineteenth and Monday the twentieth of February 1989, on a bill with Shirley Bassey, Roberto Carlos, REO Speedwagon, Emmanuel and Verónica Castro.

And that fact, which looks like a piece of scheduling trivia, is the way into the real matter. Because if at the Quinta Vergara the duo was one man, on the records the duo was never two. The lead melodic voice, the one that sings the verse, is Thomas Anders's. But the high falsetto of the chorus —the sound by which anyone recognises Modern Talking in two seconds— was not Anders's, and it was not Dieter Bohlen's either, though on television and in the videos he mouthed along to it. It was sung by four session singers who were credited nowhere.

Berne, Mörz and six singles that went nowhere

Dieter Bohlen was born on the seventh of February 1954 in Berne, in Lower Saxony, and graduated in business administration in Göttingen in 1978; his legal name at birth was Dieter Günter Bohlen and he had the middle name struck from his documents. Thomas Anders was born Bernd Weidung on the first of March 1963 in Mörz, today a district of Münstermaifeld, in Rhineland-Palatinate; "Thomas Anders" was a stage name for more than forty years, until in February 2026 he legally changed his surname and it stopped being one. They met in 1983, when Bohlen was producing German-language schlager for Anders: six singles from 1982 on, not one of them a hit. In the autumn of 1984 Bohlen took the duo project to BMG. The label said yes and put in very little money.

Where the name "Modern Talking" came from is not documented by any reliable source, and it is better to say so than to repeat forum versions. What is documented is where the sound came from: Bohlen said he copied the idea of the falsetto chorus from "Precious Little Diamond", by the Dutch band Fox the Fox, from 1983, because he had seen the effect it had on discotheque crowds. There is also a detail that explains a good deal about the man: on the official German chart record and in the album credits, the writer and producer of "You're My Heart, You're My Soul" is not Dieter Bohlen. It is "Steve Benson", a pseudonym of his. His real name did not appear in the credits of the song that made him famous.

Number one in March 1985, not in 1984

The popular account dates the explosion to 1984, and it does not add up. "You're My Heart, You're My Soul" was released on the twenty-fourth of September 1984, but it entered the German chart on the twenty-first of January 1985, at number thirty-eight, and was number one from the fourth of March to the fourteenth of April 1985, six weeks. Four more consecutive German number ones came after it: "You Can Win If You Want", "Cheri, Cheri Lady", "Brother Louie" and "Atlantis Is Calling (S.O.S. for Love)". The 1st Album, from the first of April 1985, spent forty-two weeks on the chart and sold half a million certified copies. Outside the continent things are more modest than people believe: in the United Kingdom they had four chart entries in their entire career and a single top ten, "Brother Louie" at number four, and in the United States they never entered any chart at all, even though RCA signed them and released their first album there.

Two things about those records are better than their reputation. "Brother Louie" is not about any brother: with that title Bohlen was referring to Luis Rodriguez, his sound engineer and co-producer, and the video was padded out with scenes from Once Upon a Time in America, by Sergio Leone —the reason given by the Spanish-language Wikipedia, and it is worth saying where it comes from, is that the extras who had been hired did not turn up for the shoot—. And the formula he acknowledged himself without embarrassment. To Der Spiegel, in January 1989: he did not deny in the slightest that every Modern Talking hit sounded very, very alike, because from each album they pulled as a single whatever track sounded as close as possible to the previous one. They tried it once with a ballad, "Give Me Peace on Earth", in November 1986, it stalled at twenty-nine in Germany, and they never released a ballad as a single again.

Six voices in a duo

There are four names behind the falsetto: Rolf Köhler, Michael Scholz and Detlef Wiedeke, plus Birger Corleis, who took part in the productions until 1987. Köhler was one of the most sought-after backing singers in Germany —he sang backing vocals for Saxon and Blind Guardian, toured with Roger Whittaker and was the voice of advertising jingles the whole country recognised— and between 1984 and 2000 he worked on practically everything Bohlen produced. The German Wikipedia says it in a sentence that sums up the whole business: vocally, the duo was a sextet. And it adds the scene: Bohlen mouthed the chorus in the performances and in the videos, but what you heard was Köhler.

In the credits there was nothing. The obituary Stern devoted to Köhler on the eighteenth of September 2007 puts it flatly: hanging in his studio in Brake were the gold records he had been given for his work on the Modern Talking and Blue System hits, but officially, for the millions of readers of Bravo and the admirers of the Bohlen/Anders duo, he had never existed in those bands, and neither had his fellow backing singers Detlef Wiedeke and Michael Scholz. The relationship broke down in 2000. The three asked the record company for more money for their studio work, the collaboration ended and Bohlen replaced them with three new backing singers. That is when they went to the press with the harshest accusation of all: that there is not a single note by Bohlen himself on the records. Bohlen denies it to this day. And the German Wikipedia itself notes, against the backing singers, the suspicion that the statement was revenge for being replaced.

This is where the popular account gets it wrong, and the precision matters. The three sued before the Landgericht of Berlin, the city's regional court, and in 2001 the matter was closed with a settlement of one hundred thousand German marks each, some fifty-one thousand euros, paid by the record company and not by Bohlen. But the subject of the case was not the authorship of the falsetto: it was exclusively the unauthorised use of their old vocal tracks as samples and their digital alteration. Which is to say that no court ever ruled on who sang what. What there is are two opposing versions and a financial settlement that was about something else. Stern added its own judgement on the figure: pocket money compared with the income those three had brought him.

There was a second chapter, and it did not reach a resolution either. In June 2004, prompted by statements from the singer Nino de Angelo and by the book that Frank Farian —the producer of Boney M. and of Milli Vanilli— wrote against Bohlen, the GVL, the German performers' rights society, opened an audit procedure to find out whether it had overpaid him, given that he was registered there as producer, musician and co-singer of Modern Talking. Its director, Tilo Gerlach, confirmed it to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The Anders case was closed: it was established that he was indeed the singer. For the file on Bohlen no outcome has been published. Five years later, in 2009, Der Spiegel was still calling him "Falsettmeister", the falsetto master.

In 2003 Köhler, Scholz and Wiedeke set up their own group with the lyricist Thomas Widrat and called it Systems in Blue, deliberately copying the name and the logo of Blue System, Bohlen's old project. In Germany they sold nothing; in Israel and in Siberia they filled halls with thousands of people who wanted to hear the sound that twenty years earlier had gone round the world. On Thursday the thirteenth of September 2007 Köhler recorded his last solo part for the group's second album and two hours later he collapsed. He died on the Sunday the sixteenth at night in the hospital of Hamburg-Altona, from the consequences of a stroke, at the age of fifty-six according to his record and fifty-five according to the Stern obituary. His bandmates wrote on the band's website that they had lost their best friend far too soon, and that the recognition he deserved for his great musical work never reached him in life.

Ten concerts in Moscow and Leningrad

What did travel was the record. After glasnost was announced, at the beginning of 1986, Modern Talking were able to sell officially in the Soviet Union: tens of thousands of copies were pressed and there were fans who covered more than a thousand kilometres to Moscow to join the queue, according to Der Spiegel, as though there were bananas on sale. The Kremlin's calculation, the same article says, was to import something modern in English and absolutely apolitical without letting the British or American enemy into the house. That is where the sentence that always gets repeated comes from, that they were the first Western band authorised to sell there, and it does not hold up literally: the state label Melodiya had previously released ABBA, Boney M. and Paul McCartney, among others. The hard fact, the one that needs no adjectives, is a different one: in 1987 the duo gave ten concerts in Moscow and Leningrad. And in 2009 Anders was performing for the tenth time at the State Kremlin Palace, more times than any other musician.

The sales figures are worth stating with the same discipline. The German press and the labels have spoken of sixty, of sixty-five and of one hundred and twenty million records —that last figure, the one that circulates everywhere, comes from the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2010—, and Anders went as far as one hundred and twenty-five million in an interview. No body certifies any of that. What is certified is that the BVMI credits them with six million three hundred and fifty thousand units in Germany, number ninety-two in the country's all-time list, and that the worldwide tally of certifications comes to around twenty-two million. From Latin America, Viña aside, the only documentable thing is one record: in 1994, by then solo, Anders recorded Barcos de Cristal, sung entirely in Spanish, released only for the United States and South America. There is no Latin American tour by the duo and no national charts from the region that can be cited, and a verifiable fact is better than an adjective.

Rostock, 2003, and the first edition withdrawn

The second stage has dates just as precise. They reappeared on Wetten, dass..? in March 1998; the single "You're My Heart, You're My Soul '98", with the rapper Eric Singleton, came out on the sixteenth of March and reached number two in Germany, and the album Back for Good, from the thirtieth of March 1998, was number one in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, stayed fifty-three weeks on the chart and ended up being their best-selling work: one million two hundred and fifty thousand certified copies in Germany and three million in Europe according to the IFPI's Platinum Europe Awards. Five more albums followed. The end came on stage: on Saturday the seventh of June 2003, at the Ostseestadion in Rostock, after a fierce argument backstage, Bohlen told twenty-four thousand people that Modern Talking was over, that Thomas and he had simply thought that in the future they would go back to following separate paths. The audience was in shock and so was the concert's manager: they had the impression, he said, that the split had not been planned.

Four months later, in October 2003, Bohlen published Hinter den Kulissen, the second book written with the journalist Katja Kessler, in which he accused Anders, among other things, of having improperly taken money out of the band's till. Several of those affected, Anders among them, obtained injunctions that forced the first edition to be withdrawn from sale; the following ones came out with the disputed passages blacked out. Anders claimed one million euros in damages and lost at first instance in the spring of 2005; he appealed on the twenty-first of March before the Kammergericht of Berlin, the higher regional court, and on the twenty-eighth of October 2005 the litigation ended with a settlement of sixty thousand euros, which he donated to charities. In 2006 Bohlen said he regretted having published the book. By 2009, according to Der Spiegel, the two musicians only communicated through lawyers.

What to remember

Modern Talking existed as a duo between 1983 and 1987 and between 1998 and 2003, signed five consecutive number ones in Germany from March 1985 on and has six million three hundred and fifty thousand certified units in its own country, number ninety-two in German history, a very long way from the one hundred and twenty million the press keeps repeating. Thomas Anders sang the lead vocal; the falsetto of the chorus was sung by Rolf Köhler, Michael Scholz, Detlef Wiedeke and, until 1987, Birger Corleis, without appearing in any credits, and Dieter Bohlen mouthed along on top. That is documented. What was never settled is the backing singers' bigger accusation: the Berlin case was about samples and the 2001 settlement was paid by the record company, so there is no court that has said who sang what. There are two versions and a denial that still stands.

And there is one detail that puts everything else in order. Onto the stage of the Quinta Vergara, in February 1988, walked half of Modern Talking introduced as the whole thing, because the contract predated the break-up. Seen from here, it was not a scheduling mistake: it was the most honest version of the group that was ever seen on a stage. It had always been like that, only the other way round and facing inwards: the half that mattered was not in view.

When that falsetto comes on at a party and everyone knows the chorus by heart without ever having studied it, that is Rolf Köhler, who recorded his last vocal on a Thursday in September 2007, collapsed two hours later and died without the recognition reaching him in life.

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Sources

Modern Talking, German pop and eurodisco duo formed in West Berlin in 1983 by Dieter Bohlen (composer, lyricist, arranger and producer; born Dieter Günter Bohlen on 7 February 1954 in Berne, Lower Saxony; Diplom-Kaufmann in Göttingen, 1978; credited as "Steve Benson") and Thomas Anders (lead vocals; born Bernd Weidung on 1 March 1963 in Mörz, today Münstermaifeld, Rhineland-Palatinate; in February 2026 he legally changed his surname to Anders). Active years: 1983-1987 and 1998-2003. Label of the first stage: Hansa Records (Ariola / BMG Ariola). Bohlen presented the project to BMG in the autumn of 1984. The origin of the name "Modern Talking" is not documented in any reliable source; neither is the exact day of the announcement of the 1987 break-up. Bohlen said he had taken the idea of the falsetto chorus from "Precious Little Diamond", by Fox the Fox (1983). Falsetto voices, uncredited: Rolf Köhler, Michael Scholz and Detlef Wiedeke, plus Birger Corleis until 1987; de.wikipedia notes that Bohlen mouthed the chorus in performances and videos and that what was heard was Köhler, and summarises that "vocally the duo was a sextet". "Brother Louie" alludes to Luis Rodriguez, Bohlen's sound engineer and co-producer; the video includes scenes from "Once Upon a Time in America" (Sergio Leone), and the reason —that the extras did not turn up for the shoot— comes from es.wikipedia. Singles and German peaks (Offizielle Deutsche Charts): "You're My Heart, You're My Soul" (24-9-1984; entry 21-1-1985 at no. 38; no. 1 from 4-3-1985 to 14-4-1985, 6 weeks; no. 1 also in Austria, Switzerland, Belgium/Flanders, Denmark and Portugal; no. 56 in the United Kingdom; Gold, 500,000; Musik/Text and Produzent: Steve Benson), "You Can Win If You Want" (13-3-1985, no. 1, 1 week), "Cheri, Cheri Lady" (2-9-1985, no. 1, 4 weeks), "Brother Louie" (27-1-1986, no. 1, 4 weeks; no. 4 in the United Kingdom), "Atlantis Is Calling (S.O.S. for Love)" (28-4-1986, no. 1, 4 weeks), "Geronimo's Cadillac" (no. 3), "Give Me Peace on Earth" (11-11-1986, no. 29; the first ballad released as a single and the last), "Jet Airliner" (no. 7) and "In 100 Years …" (9-11-1987, no. 30). Albums of the first stage: "The 1st Album" (1-4-1985, no. 1, 42 weeks, Platinum), "Let's Talk About Love" (14-10-1985, no. 2, Platinum), "Ready for Romance" (26-5-1986, no. 1, Platinum; no. 76 in the United Kingdom), "In the Middle of Nowhere" (10-11-1986, no. 1, Gold), "Romantic Warriors" (8-6-1987, no. 3) and "In the Garden of Venus" (30-11-1987, no. 35). United Kingdom (Official Charts Company): 4 entries in the Top 75 singles chart, 1 top ten, 0 number ones, 22 weeks on the chart; 0 album entries in the Top 75. United States: no entry on the Billboard Hot 100 or on any other chart, despite the signing with RCA in 1985. Second stage: return on "Wetten, dass..?" in March 1998; "You're My Heart, You're My Soul '98" with Eric Singleton (16-3-1998, no. 2, Platinum); "Back for Good" (30-3-1998, no. 1 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, 5 consecutive weeks and 53 on the chart; 5× Gold BVMI = 1,250,000 and 3× Platinum Europe from the IFPI = 3 million); "Alone" (22-2-1999, no. 1; 1× Platinum Europe = 1 million); "2000: Year of the Dragon" (28-2-2000, no. 3); "America" (19-3-2001, no. 2); "Victory" (18-3-2002, no. 1); "Universe" (31-3-2003, no. 2). Sales: the BVMI certifies 6,350,000 units in Germany (figure as of 6-1-2026), no. 92 on the country's all-time list; the worldwide tally of certifications comes to around 22,242,000. The figures of 60, 65 and 120 million come from labels and the press —the 120 million from "Süddeutsche Zeitung", 17-5-2010— and the 125 million is a statement by Thomas Anders to "Bunte"; no body certifies those figures. The backing singers' case: Rolf Köhler, Detlef Wiedeke and Michael Scholz sued before the Landgericht of Berlin and in 2001 it was closed with a settlement of 100,000 German marks (≈51,000 €) each, paid by the record company and not by Bohlen; the subject of the case was exclusively the unauthorised use of the old vocal tracks as samples and their digital alteration, so no court ruled on the authorship of the falsetto. The three stated publicly that there is not "a single note" by Bohlen on the records; Bohlen denies it, and de.wikipedia records the opposite suspicion, that it was revenge for the replacement of the backing choir in 2000. The claim by en.wikipedia that Bohlen acknowledged the trio on the back cover of "Obsession", by Blue System, does not hold up: its own source, the "Stern" obituary, does not say so, and "Obsession" is from 1990. In June 2004 the GVL (Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten) opened an audit procedure on Bohlen, registered there as producer, musician and co-singer, following the statements by Nino de Angelo to "Bild am Sonntag" (13-6-2004) and the book by Frank Farian "Stupid dieser Bohlen" (2004); its director, Tilo Gerlach, confirmed it to "Süddeutsche Zeitung" (19-6-2004). The Anders case was closed when it was established that he was indeed the singer; for the file on Bohlen no outcome has been published. De Angelo's management confirmed that what he sang was Bohlen's part, not Anders's, and De Angelo apologised afterwards. In 2009 "Der Spiegel" was still calling Bohlen "Falsettmeister". Systems in Blue: founded in 2003 by Köhler, Wiedeke and Scholz with the lyricist Thomas Widrat, with the name and logo copied from Blue System; no sales in Germany and full halls in Israel and Siberia. Rolf Köhler (stage pseudonym Marc De Ville), 24 May 1951 - 16 September 2007, died on the Sunday night in the hospital of Hamburg-Altona from the consequences of a stroke; on Thursday 13 September 2007 he had recorded his last solo part for the second Systems in Blue album and collapsed two hours later. Age at death: 56 according to his record, 55 according to the "Stern" obituary (Alexander Kühn, 18-9-2007). Köhler was one of the most sought-after backing singers in Germany (Westernhagen, Peter Kraus, Roger Whittaker, Saxon, Blind Guardian, advertising jingles) and worked from 1984 to 2000 on almost everything Bohlen produced. Soviet Union: after glasnost was announced at the beginning of 1986 tens of thousands of records were pressed and there were fans who travelled more than a thousand kilometres to Moscow to queue; in 1987 the duo gave 10 concerts in Moscow and Leningrad, and on New Year's Eve 2002 it gave two performances in Moscow; in 2009 Anders was performing for the tenth time at the State Kremlin Palace (Ann-Dorit Boy, "Der Spiegel", 24-4-2009). The primacy of "first Western band authorised to sell officially in the USSR" is attributed by "Der Spiegel" expressly to Anders and does not hold up literally: Melodiya had previously released records by ABBA, Boney M., Paul McCartney, Dalida and Amanda Lear, and a Beatles single; Boney M. gave a concert in Moscow in December 1978. Second split: Saturday 7 June 2003, Ostseestadion in Rostock, before 24,000 people according to dpa and "Stern" (8-6-2003) and 25,000 according to de.wikipedia; there was a fierce argument backstage and the concert's manager stated that it did not seem to them that the split had been planned; Peter Angemer, Bohlen's manager, confirmed to dpa the following day that it was final. Books: "Nichts als die Wahrheit" (Bohlen with Katja Kessler, Heyne, Munich, autumn 2002, more than a million copies, Goldene Feder prize 2003) and "Hinter den Kulissen" (Random House Entertainment, Munich, October 2003, ISBN 3-7645-0173-1), whose first edition was withdrawn from sale because of injunctions obtained by several of those affected, among them Thomas Anders and Nadja Abd el Farrag; the later editions carry the disputed passages blacked out. Anders's claim for 1 million euros in damages was dismissed in the spring of 2005; he appealed on 21 March 2005 before the Kammergericht of Berlin and on 28 October 2005 the litigation ended with a settlement of 60,000 euros that Anders donated to charities ("Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", 28-10-2005). In 2006 Bohlen said he regretted having published the book. Latin America: 29th Festival Internacional de la Canción de Viña del Mar, 17-22 February 1988, with Modern Talking announced for the Friday 19 and Thomas Anders alone for the Saturday 20; according to the festival's record, the organisers had signed the contract with the duo before the 1987 split and the only one who walked onto the stage of the Quinta Vergara was Anders, introduced as though he were the group. Anders returned for the 30th edition as a solo act, on Sunday 19 and Monday 20 February 1989, on a bill with Shirley Bassey, Roberto Carlos, REO Speedwagon, Emmanuel and Verónica Castro. Both items come from es.wikipedia and should be confirmed with Chilean press of the period. In 1994 Anders recorded "Barcos de Cristal" (Polydor), sung entirely in Spanish and released only for the United States and South America; the Argentine no. 1 attributed to it is unreferenced. There is no Modern Talking tour of Latin America and no citable national charts from the region. Dieter Bohlen and Thomas Anders are alive as of October 2026: Bohlen, 72, a judge on "Deutschland sucht den Superstar" since 2002, and Anders, 63, resident in Koblenz. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Offizielle Deutsche Charts (GfK Entertainment), Official Charts Company, the BVMI Gold & Platin database, the IFPI's Platinum Europe Awards (1999), "Der Spiegel" (no. 3/1989, 24-4-2009 and 19-3-2026), "Stern" (8-6-2003 and 18-9-2007), "Süddeutsche Zeitung" (19-6-2004 and 17-5-2010), "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (28-10-2005), "Musikmarkt" (1-10-2004), "tz" (1-8-2012), Deutsche Welle, the archived official biography from Sony Music Germany, James Arena ("Europe's Stars of '80s Dance Pop", McFarland, 2017) and the German, English and Spanish Wikipedias.