The Top 10 music acts of the 80s from Germany

Big-band arrangements of pop hits: the last of the ten most successful German musicians in the 1980s was James Last. The band leader from Bremen struck a chord with his easy-listening sound, putting out over 50 albums in the 1980s. James Last toured the world with his 40-piece orchestra right up to his death in June, 2015.

Electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk introduced an avant-garde element into the 1980s that didn't stop with the critics and pundits. It connected with the charts, as well. "The Model" even took Kraftwerk up the British singles charts. And an innovative animated video, "Musique Non Stop“ carried it to number one on the U.S. dance charts.

A young Nena and her band launched several albums and singles up the world charts in the 1980s. But none flew as high as the 1983 anti-war pop song "99 Luftballons", redone in English as "99 Red Balloons" a year later. It was a good start to a long career. Today, over three decades later, Nena is still putting out hit pop tunes.

Boney M. was already riding high in the 1970s rankings with the hits they're remembered for today. But the disco trio created by German producer Frank Farian carried their success over into the list of top German acts of the 1980s with more serious and mellow tunes. One of their hits in this decade "We Kill the World" was a plea for environmental protection.

It's synthpop with a catchy tune. In 1983, singer Marian Gold founded Alphaville in Münster. The band's name refers to a dystopian film by French Nouvelle Vague director Jean-Luc Godard. Alphaville followed their hit single "Big in Japan" with "Forever Young", which aspired to keep its title promise both on charts all across Europe and as a staple of high school proms across the United States.

The Scorpions have been rocking straight through for fifty years now and sold around 100 million records, the greater part of them during the 1980s. The hard-rockers from Hanover boosted sales touring the world from Brazil and the USA to the Soviet Union, playing such hits as "Rock You Like a Hurricane" and "Still Loving You".

Sandra was a German female pop export hit of the 1980s. She, her producer and her then-husband Michael Cretu formed a musical dream team. It may come as a surprise that her mega-hit "I’ll never be) Maria Magdalena" brought her added success in Japan as lead singer of the all-woman trio Arabesque.

Heidi Stern, aka Jennifer Rush, grew up in both the USA and Germany. In 1984, the German producer team Gunter Mende and Candy de Rouge wrote "The Power of Love" with her in mind. The ballad conquered charts from South Africa to Scandinavia and earned a mention in the Guinness Book of Records as the best-selling single by a female solo artist in the history of the British music industry.

In the late 1980s, the pop duo Milli Vanilli took number one on the US charts several times. Once again, star German producer Frank Farian had been at work. But success turned to scandal when Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan were found to be lip-syncing and not singing. Milli Vanilli had to return their Grammy and retire from music.

The trademarks of Modern Talking were simple lyrics, disco pop and studio tans. Even if the German duo of Thomas Anders und Dieter Bohlen was often maligned, songs like "You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul" and "Brother Louie" had millions of sales and placed Modern Talking squarely at number one on PopXport's 1980s Ranking.