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More than 100 Swiss Hits from the Charts

Switzerland has many pop and rock artists and sometimes even folklore or singer / songwriter tracks make their way to the Swiss charts. But only very few artists are known outside Switzerland and since the home market is limited (7 million inhabitants with four different official languages) most pop artists can't make a living from music alone. This page tries to give an overview of popular Swiss artists in the last 70 years and of the kind of music they have produced.

Swiss artists seem to be fond of experimenting with different styles and style mixes as well as playing with names. Or would you expect a band with the lovely name Krokus [crocus flower] to play Hardrock / Heavy Metal?

A warning: in a multicultural environment you cannot really tell the language of a song from the apparent language of it's title nor from the name of the interpret.

Swiss Hits before 1968

American Dixieland and Swing style had quite some influence from the 1920's to the 1940's, leading to some interesting crossover compositions of Swiss Folklore × Swing. Swiss Charts were only introduced in 1968, so Chart positions are not applicable to older songs. But a list of the most successful older hits can be extracted from CD samplers and radio shows allowing people to choose what they'd like to hear.

Hits from the Swiss Charts since 1968

* = this Rock song features a Swiss alphorn played in a quite unusual way

• An analysis of chart positions reached by popular Swiss artists shows that the Swiss population does not necessarily give a "national bonus" to Swiss artists. Much to the contrary, Swiss musicians do have a really hard time getting to the top. If we are looking at the 2004 and 2005 rankings, it seems that this is changing, however.
• Swiss D.J. Bobo is the 3rd most successful interpret right after Madonna and Michael Jackson in Switzerland's all time best artists charts since 1968, but the next Swiss artists are the hardrock band Gotthard ranked only #52, followed by Peter, Sue & Marc ranked #74 and the rappers Die Fantastischen Vier ranked #100. All other Swiss artists can't be found among the top 100 ...
• Though Yodeling is an important feature in Swiss folklore, most Swiss people can't sing in this special way. But evidently synthisizers can be trained to do so, see the 1985 experiment Yo-Lollo-Diuh by Matterhorn Project.

• Swiss Singers and Songwriters

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