Electronic Music Blog

Hello my name is Michael Kavanagh and on this Blog I will be talking about Electronic Music, but mainly the Electronic Music of Kraftwerk.

Many people may be unfamiliar with Kraftwerk, or their music, as I know I was but they are an Electronic/Pop music band from Germany. One thing that I think definitely made Kraftwerk unique was their ability to sing in different languages. As Kraftwerk were from Germany they obviously were able to sing in German, but they could also sing in English and in French. In their earlier image Kraftwerk dressed in suits and have short well-kept hair. This in itself was something that also made them unique, as many of the ‘boy bands’ of their day didn’t portray the image they did.  

Kraftwerk released 3 albums between the periods of 1970 - 1974 and then released an additional 5 between the periods of 1974 – 1981. Their fourth album, Autobahn, was a breakthrough album for Kraftwerk. It was also very unique in that their title track of the album was over 22 minutes long and took up a side of their cd. Autobahn was also supposed to be comparative to a long road journey. An edited version of the song reached the Top 10 in the US and UK charts. They then released Radio Activity, Trans Europe, Man Machine, and Computer World.  

As I had mentioned earlier Kraftwerk are and were the biggest influence on electronic music because they were able to bridge the gap that many other artists were unable to do. They were able to conform to their audiences’ needs and wants, i.e.; hearing the songs in their own language, rather than having to listen to them in a foreign language.

I am not really a big fan of electronic music on a whole, so from a listeners’ standpoint I wouldn’t say I really like their music but I also wouldn’t say I dislike it, but that it is something I wouldn’t mind listening to every now and then. From an industry professional standpoint it gave me a bit of insight on how electronic music is composed and different elements that make it up.