HERE you can find the ranking of the most popular songs on Spotify from Austria and Switzerland in 2024! Which songs have the most streams?:
Music can be relaxing, happy, motivating and even nostalgic. Is there a song that reminds you of a person or a place? We here at Preply wanted to know which songs most express “Typically Austria!” and “Typically Switzerland!” To find out, we analyzed songs on Spotify to compile a top 20 of the most popular songs from Austria and Switzerland. We then examined the respective dialects for the top 20.
Top 20 most popular songs in Austria
Our first place is led by the international classic “Live is Life” by Opus with almost 240 million streams on Spotify. In 1985, this catchy tune climbed to number 1 in the international charts and may well be the most famous song from Austria internationally.
1985 seems to have been a good year for music in Austria: because we continue in German with our number 2 song: “Rock Me Amadeus” by Falco. Did you know that it is the only German-language song that was at the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 and the British singles charts at the same time? A song that rocks at home and internationally!
“Hulapalu”: The hit song by musician Andreas Gabalier from 2015 rounds off our top 3 of our typically Austrian songs with over 117 million streams on Spotify. What does Hulapalu actually mean? Even Andreas doesn’t know: He said that an ex-girlfriend had used the word, but he still wasn’t really sure what it meant.
Viennese and Styrian sound like music to the ears
Most of the songs in our top 20 are sung in Austrian German, with influences from the Viennese dialect. Falco in particular, as well as the bands Josh and Wanda, bring Viennese influences into the top 20.
Styrian is also represented several times in the top 20, especially by Andreas Gabalier, as well as the band STS .
Our 20th place “Brenna tuats gut” also brings the dialect from the Salzkammergut region into the top 20.
With all these different dialects, some people might almost think that one needs German Tutoring to understand the texts. But don’t worry: you can often find a translation into standard German with just a quick Google search.
Top 20 most popular songs in Switzerland
In Switzerland, five of the first six places are songs that are not sung in German, but in English or French. This includes our first place: “Ma Chérie” by DJ Antoine. The hit song came out in 2011 and was in the charts all over Europe: for example in Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Slovakia, Poland and of course in Switzerland.
In second place, with over 63 million streams on Spotify, is the song “The Code” by Nemo. This year’s Eurovision hit may have “only” made it to second place in our ranking, but it helped Switzerland win the 2024 Eurovision Contest.
The first German-language song can be found at number 3: “079” by Lo & Leduc. The pop duo, consisting of Lorenz Häberli and Luc Oggier, was founded in 2005 and the song “079” helped them to achieve their big breakthrough, along with the song “Zucker fürs Volk”.
Zurich German goes high
When analyzing the dialects, most of the German songs are sung in Zurich German. This can be explained quite simply: With around 1.5 million inhabitants in the canton of Zurich, this dialect is the most widely spoken of the Alemannic dialects in Switzerland.
The Bernese dialect and the dialect from Central Switzerland also appear several times in the top 20. The Bernese dialect is often used by Patent Ochsner, Kunz and Plüsch. The band Stubete Gäng represents the dialect from Central Switzerland.
Use of dialects in music
Sylvia Johnson, language expert at Preply, comments: “Songs sung in dialect can trigger completely different emotions in listeners than those evoked in the standard version of the language. Dialects remind us of home and evoke a feeling of connection. Singing in dialect creates a down-to-earth image of the musicians and makes it easier to create closeness.”
And what about dialects in other languages, such as English? Browse through our selection of English courses and learn more about regional differences during your English lessons.
About Preply
Preply is an e-learning platform for language learning. The Ukrainian company employs people in 30 countries in Europe, North America, South America, Africa and Asia. Preply currently has over 32,000 experienced teachers from all over the world.
Methodology
We analyzed 10 popular Spotify playlists per country, which included titles such as “Austria Hits” All songs were then put together in a list and the songs that appeared at least twice were analyzed further. We then had more than 100 different songs per country for which we collected the number of Spotify streams. We then sorted the list by number of streams and used ChatGPT to analyze in which dialect they were sung.
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Text source: Preply (text template)
