Retro Video of the Week: "Looking For Freedom" by David Hasselhoff

With the Euro Cup currently being hosted by Germany, it seems fitting to have a Retro Video of the Week with a German tinge. Friday will mark the 35th anniversary of the release of Looking For Freedom, the third studio album from a guy who once watched me play a high school football game, David Hasselhoff.  A lot of people don't know this, but Hasselhoff is from America and not Germany.  Already a popular actor because of the hit TV show Knight Rider, Hasselhoff began to record music in the mid '80s.  While his music failed to break through in the U.S., the Germans, Swiss, and Austrians loved it.

In December 1988, Hasselhoff had released a single named "Looking For Freedom," which was a huge hit in parts of Western Europe -- well, the German-speaking ones anyway.  It was a poignant song given the wave of Eastern Bloc nations that were starting to open up and drop communism.  It spent 8 weeks at #1 on the German pop chart, 4 weeks at #1 on the Swiss pop chart, and one week at #1 in Austria.  It also went to #4 on the European Hot 100 Singles chart, and it was the #1 Year End chart song for 1989 in both Germany and Switzerland.  Spurred by the success of that song, Hasselhoff decided to name his 1989 album the same thing (the song was on the album as well).  It went to the Top 5 on the album charts in -- you guessed it -- Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

Hasselhoff would famously sing "Looking For Freedom" on New Year's Eve at the end of 1989 at the Berlin Wall, only seven weeks after protesters crashed the Wall and started to dismantle it.  But the official music video has nothing to do with that.  It's the Hoff singing while walking through a post-apocalyptic waste land and then singing while two scantily clad nurses fight over him, with some random Knight Rider clips interspersed.  God, I miss the '80s.