Talk:Big in Japan (Alphaville song)

Why do we have the Sandra version listed?
By its own admission (only 125 copies sold), it appears to fail to meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines for songs.

I move we strike the section & infobox for it and instead include it in the list of covers below, anyone disagree? 87Fan (talk) 16:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I condensed the Sandra version into one line in the Covers section 87Fan (talk) 20:10, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Why is there a Klaus Schulze Cover in an article about an Alphaville song? 79.214.60.115 (talk) 14:35, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Good question. No idea. Fixed. 87Fan (talk) 01:04, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

What is the song about ?
I would like more details. I have never really understood it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.171.35.39 (talk) 21:24, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I hope this helps - translated from the german article: Singer Marian Gold about 'Big in Japan': "'Big in Japan' tells about a love couple trying to get away from heroin. Both of them dream about how nice it would be to love each other without the drug: No burglary, no punters, no ice age in the eyes, true emotions, true worlds. Until today, the station 'bahnhof zoo' in berlin is a meeting point for junkies. That's the reason why this place became the setting for this song. In 1977 I was a visitor in a club in Berlin-Kreuzberg named SO36 on a regular basis. I hoped to meet David Bowie. There was a rumour that he was in Berlin at that time. There was a guy selling records of independent bands from the USA and the UK. I bought an album from an english band namend 'Big in Japan'. 'Bin in Japan' means that you can be a king in another world. And if you are not, you can at least tell it at home. Japan is far away. Somehow this statement fitted perfectly to the story of the love couple. That's why I used it for the chorus of the song. It was strange: When we released the song, Frankie Goes to Hollywood were number one with 'Relax' in the german charts, and we just needed some weeks to get ahead of them. And Holly Johnson, the singer of the band, was a member of that group 'big in japan' (before he joined Frankie goes to Hollywood), from which I stole that line before." 93.230.116.84 (talk) 00:00, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Do you have a reference to the article? Is it online somewhere? Without Marian Gold explaining this I would have no idea that the song Big In Japan is about drug addicted lovers trying to escape drug use. Basically the music video just has references to Japan. I see no evidence of drug use in the music video. I don't get any references to drug use in the song lyrics. I don't understand why it's about lovers that use heroin and want to get away from the drug abuse. Qewr4231 (talk) 05:53, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I have expanded and explained this aspect, citing Gold and Lloyd's account of the matter. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:01, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't have a reference but the lines " will wait here for my man tonight", "Pay, then I'll sleep by your side" and "Shall I stay here at the zoo" (2nd vers) imply that the narrator is a male prostitute. The Zoo train station was a well known place for drug use and behind the station there were was male prostitution going on.JustBen81 (talk) 09:51, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 one external links on Big in Japan (Alphaville song). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131020025459/http://australian-charts.com/forum.asp?todo=viewthread&id=21533&pages= to http://australian-charts.com/forum.asp?todo=viewthread&id=21533&pages=
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://musicseek.info/no1hits/1984.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.sandra-cretu.narod.ru/Sandra/Discography/japan_e.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.hirado.hu/Hirek/2010/05/07/10/Tarol_a_Bikicsunaj_.aspx

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 03:30, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Big in Japan (Alphaville song). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131020025459/http://australian-charts.com/forum.asp?todo=viewthread&id=21533&pages= to http://australian-charts.com/forum.asp?todo=viewthread&id=21533&pages=
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://musicseek.info/no1hits/1984.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.sandra-cretu.narod.ru/Sandra/Discography/japan_e.htm
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.hirado.hu/Hirek/2010/05/07/10/Tarol_a_Bikicsunaj_.aspx

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 14:39, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Is any information available on sales in Japan?
I have accessed many Wikipedia entries for songs. Rarely, if ever, have I seen a 'Chart Performance' field for Japan. In this case, however, I think people would be interested in discovering whether the song was, in fact, big in Japan. This includes myself. Alas, however, I would not know where to begin my search so I send it out to the Wikipedia universe... Tom1976Sydney (talk) 10:43, 23 August 2019 (UTC)