Boney M.

During the 1970s the Euro-disco ensemble Boney M. enjoyed massive popularity throughout Europe. German record producer Frank Farian, born in 1942, first captured the single “Baby Do You Wanna Bump?,” which performed strongly in Holland and Belgium, and then formed Boney M. expressly to promote the recording by recruiting four West Indian vocalists—Marcia Barrett, Liz Mitchell, Maizie Williams, and Bobby Farrell—who had already been active as session singers in Germany. “Daddy Cool” entered the U.K. Top Ten in February 1977, and a cover of Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny” followed the next month. “Ma Baker” came within a hair of the U.K. summit in July, while “Belfast” reached the Top Ten by December.

Boney M. attained their commercial zenith in 1978 with the pairing “Rivers of Babylon”/“Brown Girl in the Ring,” which became the second-biggest-selling single in U.K. chart history; “Rivers of Babylon” also supplied the group’s solitary U.S. Top 40 entry. Their album Nightflight to Venus ascended to number one on the U.K. charts. October brought another Top Ten hit in “Rasputin,” soon eclipsed by the seasonal chart-topper “Mary’s Boy Child”/“Oh My Lord,” later recognized as the fifth-biggest-selling single in U.K. history. March 1979 saw “Painter Man” reach the U.K. Top Ten, and May delivered “Hooray! Hooray! It’s a Holi-Holiday.” The album Oceans of Fantasy claimed the top spot that September. Steady European demand persisted, illustrated by a compilation that re-entered the U.K. Top Ten in 1994. Farian subsequently masterminded the late-’80s dance sensation Milli Vanilli.

In 2017 Farian and Liz Mitchell, still operating under the Boney M. name, issued the festive conceptual holiday LP World Music for Christmas, which merged familiar world-music tracks with new Christmas lyrics.