Sailor (original title: Seemann ) is a song written by Werner Scharfenberger (de) and Fini Busch (de) which via a 1959 recording by Lolita became an international hit, with its #5 peak on the Hot 100 chart in Billboard making "Sailor" the most successful American hit sung in German until "99 Luftballons" by Nena in 1984.
With English lyrics written by Norman Newell (credited as "David West") the song also provided a comeback vehicle for two veteran UK vocalists: Petula Clark and Anne Shelton whose respective versions of "Sailor" were both musical milestones for each singer marking Clark's first #1 on the UK Singles chart and Shelton's final chart appearance.
A schlager-style number, "Sailor" in its original German lyric addresses a seafaring love object with an acceptance of his wanderlust: the English-language version inverts this sentiment turning the song into a plea for the sailor to return. The song is sometimes sung by male vocalists from the point of view of the sailor with the lyrics adjusted accordingly.
Famous quotes containing the word sailor:
“The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head—no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)