Skip to content

Karel Gott

“The Golden Voice Of Prague”, “Sinatra of the East”, “Golden Nightingale”, “Singer of the Century” or “Messenger of the Good News” – Those are some of the qualities attributed to Karel Gott, the King of Czech pop music. He’s one of the greatest performers ever on the Czech musical scene, both traditional and modern, and at the same time one of the greatest non-anglophone pop stars in the world. On the popular music scene we can hardly find many artists as popular for such a long time – and in this respect Karel Gott is a phenomenon…

Karel Gott started his professional career at singing competitions and in the Prague Dance-Cafés in 1957. The first records he made was in 1960 (in English) and his first great hit was recorded in 1963. Since then, nearly 60 years, he was enjoying enormous popularity as a singer of all generations, towering above time and fashion trends. In the popularity polls conducted over the years, he wins the very best places since 1963 until his death in 2019.

Karel Gott has mastered the art of very universal artist, excelling at a wide spectrum of genres, though perhaps he is especially known for his schlager hits and romantic cantilenas, simple catchy melodic songs and ballads – easy listening mainstream pop style that was gaining mass popularity during 60s and 70s, especially in Europe. What consists so extraordinary success of his career in? He was able to combine his great, strong and brilliant tenor with his perfectly mastered and skilled singing, his musical feeling, professionalism, ambition, self-discipline, strong charisma, even spontaneous power of expression and genre changes to sing nearly anything, including opera arias, classical chansons, national and folklore songs, rock, jazz, swing, rock’n’roll, traditional arrangements, musicals, modern pop and country.

He’s performed in all countries across Europe (except Albania and Scandinavia), and also in North and South America, Asia and Australia. He’s gained the hearts and respect of millions of faithful fans in Europe and even in America or Japan (although he’s less well-known there). But he has been the favorite star in all German-speaking countries since the second half of 60s, as well as in Benelux and Eastern Europe, and since the early 60s in Czechoslovakia (since 1993 Czech Republic and Slovakia). Karel Gott has literally grown into an idol and even a symbol of an age, when the world was not globalized, but divided by the Iron Curtain. In this “minefield” between two political regimes he became a superstar of all generations, a fixed star and one of the greatest legends of European pop music. Karel Gott performed in hundreds of TV shows, his own ones or as a special guest (Gilbert Bécaud Show, Nashville Country Music Festival, Europarty, Rudi Carell Show, James Last Show, Ein Kessel Buntes) all over the world. He’s also a record breaker in the number of recordings he’s made – he has recorded over 130 original new albums, and there are countless numbers of compilations as well. It is estimated around 100 million records with his voice have been sold in total (from this 60 million certified units) .

Karel Gott received many awards, including more than 50 Diamond, Platinum, Golden and Silver Records for being the most successful artist of Supraphon, Мелодия, Polydor, Philips, PolyGram and Universal at the time, as well as other record publishers. He cooperates with many musical publishers in Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan. His records came out almost all over the Europe, from Portugal to Russia, and also in the United States and Canada. Amongst the languages he has sung in are French, Hebrew, Yiddish, Latin, Ukrainian, Spanish, Roma (Gypsy), Polish, Hungarian, Serbian and Slovakian, but his most famous albums were recorded in German and Czech, though some English, Russian and Italian records topped the charts as well.


Čeština
Slovenčina
Deutsch
Русский
Polski
Українська
Français
Italiano
Español
Nederlands
Hrvatski
Magyar
Svenska
Dansk