Shocking Blue – Shocking You

The world knows Shocking Blue for one song — but the Dutch band behind “Venus” wrote a whole catalog of gems, and this 1971 stormer topped the charts in France while barely making a ripple at home.

Some bands spend their whole careers fighting the “one-hit wonder” label, and few deserve to escape it more than Shocking Blue. To most of the world they are the group behind Venus, the 1969 smash that made them the first Dutch act ever to top the American charts. But the band from The Hague had a deep well of songs beyond that single hit — and Shocking You, released in 1971, is one of the finest examples of everything they could do when the spotlight moved on.

Keep watching: Shocking Blue – Venus · explore more 70s music →

Like almost everything the band recorded, Shocking You was written by guitarist and mastermind Robbie van Leeuwen, the sole songwriter who drove Shocking Blue’s entire output. It opens their 1971 record, informally known as the 3rd Album, and it captures the group at full strength: van Leeuwen’s crisp, rhythm-driven guitar, a touch of the psychedelia and sitar-flavored texture he loved, and out front the unmistakable voice of Mariska Veres. The song did curious business on the charts — it was only a modest performer in the band’s native Netherlands, yet it climbed all the way to No. 1 in France and found enthusiastic audiences in Germany, Japan, and across Latin America. It was proof that Shocking Blue’s appeal reached far beyond their homeland, even when the hometown crowd shrugged.

The woman with the kohl-rimmed eyes

Much of the band’s magnetism came from Veres. Born in The Hague in 1947 to a Hungarian violinist of Roma descent, she cut a striking figure on stage — jet-black hair piled high (in fact a wig), dramatic kohl-rimmed eyes, and a sultry, powerful voice that could shift from a purr to a wail. She had joined Shocking Blue in 1968, replacing original singer Fred de Wilde, and instantly transformed them from a promising beat group into something far more commanding. On Shocking You, her delivery is all confidence and cool, riding van Leeuwen’s arrangement with the poise of a natural star. Around them, the classic lineup was completed by bassist Klaasje van der Wal, drummer Cor van der Beek, and second guitarist Leo van de Ketterij, who added extra muscle to the band’s sound during this brief, fertile period.

The video preserved here comes from that era, capturing the band performing the song on German television’s Disco in 1971 — a reminder of just how big Shocking Blue were on the Continent even as America moved on. There is a directness to these early-’70s TV performances that no modern promo can replicate: a band playing to camera, letting the song and the singer do all the work.

The songs that would not stay buried

Here is the twist that history handed Shocking Blue: their songs kept coming back, often bigger the second time around. In 1986, the British trio Bananarama took Venus all the way back to No. 1 in America, introducing the band’s signature tune to a whole new MTV generation. Even more improbably, a struggling young American group called Nirvana chose a Shocking Blue song, Love Buzz, as their very first single in 1988, later including it on their debut album — meaning the band that would soon detonate rock music launched itself on the back of a Dutch psychedelic-pop tune from The Hague. Few groups dismissed as “one-hit wonders” can claim a legacy that stretches from 1969 to grunge.

Van Leeuwen, worn out by relentless touring and the pressure of being the band’s only writer, left in 1973, and Shocking Blue dissolved the following year. Mariska Veres carried on performing, eventually turning to jazz, and remained the beloved grande dame of Dutch pop until her death from cancer in 2006 at 59. Drummer Cor van der Beek died in 1998. But songs like Shocking You keep their memory bright — vivid, tuneful, and far too good to be forgotten in the shadow of a single hit. Listen to it now and the obvious question is the one Shocking Blue never quite got a fair answer to: how was this band ever “just” the Venus group?