Boney M.
The German-Caribbean disco group that turned producer Frank Farian's studio wizardry into one of the best-selling acts in European pop history. Boney M. began in 1974 as a Farian studio project and took public shape in 1976 with a visual lineup of four Caribbean-born performers — lead singer Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett, both from Jamaica, Maizie Williams from Montserrat, and Bobby Farrell from Aruba. The debut album Take the Heat off Me and its single Daddy Cool launched them across Europe, and a run of records including Love for Sale and Nightflight to Venus made them inescapable through the second half of the decade.
Behind the glamour was an unusual arrangement: Farian recorded much of the group's vocal himself, including the deep male parts Farrell mimed on stage, building the Boney M. sound in the studio and letting the performers carry it to television and the dance floor. The hits kept coming — Sunny, Ma Baker, Rasputin, Rivers of Babylon, and the perennial Mary's Boy Child — and the group sold more than 100 million records worldwide. Bobby Farrell died on December 30, 2010, in Saint Petersburg, the city tied forever to their Rasputin; Frank Farian died in January 2024. Rival touring lineups still carry the name across Europe today.
Articles on Boney M.
Boney M. – Hooray! Hooray! It’s A Holi-Holiday
Seven German No. 1s in a row, and this was the one that broke the streak — built on a 19th-century American folk song most listeners never recognized.
Boney M. – Mary’s Boy Child
The "Oh My Lord" Section Was Added Spontaneously
Boney M. – Rasputin
History lesson in a mirrorball—Boney M turn a Russian tale into a pan-European floorfiller
Boney M. – Sunny
Boney M. – Daddy Cool
The man dancing to it on TV never sang a note, the man singing it never appeared, and the trick launched one of the biggest-selling groups of the 1970s.
Boney M. – Rivers Of Babylon (ZDF Disco 12.06.1978)
Two Thousand, Five Hundred Years Before Frank Farian Got Involved