History Music / Scooter

* WordSaladLyrics: They will drop random lyrics in all of their music. Making it sound rather goofy and this is their trademark.

!!This band exhibits the following tropes:

* IntercourseWithYou: In “Aiii Shot the DJ”
-->”Where is the punnani?\\
Under my skin, can’t you see I’m horny?

* OdeToYouth: Their song “The Logical Song”
--> When I was young\\

A miracle, oh, it was beautiful, magical

* NoPronunciationGuide: "Nessaja" is never said in the song, so opinion is divided on how to pronounce it, but common consensus seems to be to pronounce it in a German way ("Ness-AY-a"), thus making it rhyme with "Messiah".

Albums:

They have also released several GreatestHits albums, the most successful of which is ''Push the Beat for This Jam (The Singles 98-02)'', a 1CD distillation of the 2CD European compilation ''Push the Beat for This Jam (The Second Chapter)'', in 2002.

For similar music see: Dune, Blümchen, Charly Lownoise & Mental Theo, Flamman & Abraxas, Party Animals, and DJ Paul Elstak.

* MemeticMutation: The line "Siberia, the place to be" from "The Logical Song" has long been ironically remade by (chiefly British) listeners as "[British town], the place to be", with the implication of making an unexciting place sound like an exciting place.
* NoDubForYou: The band's autobiography "Always Hardcore" is, despite the English title, only available in German. An English translation was planned, but if not outright cancelled, languishes in DevelopmentHell. As a result, many online stores that were going to sell the English version simply imported the German one instead. One saving grace is that it does contain a lot of photos, so even people without much knowledge of German can get something out of it.

* RecursiveImport: The group originally released ''Push the Beat for This Jam'' as a 2 disc collection of singles and rare material spanning '98-'02, but after the success of "The Logical Song" as a single in the UK, they released an identically titled compilation of the majority of songs on that compilation, plus several earlier ones and the new track "Nessaja" - which made it career-spanning. In their native Germany, the group released a modified version of this compilation - ''24 Carat Gold'' - which included the tracks omitted from the UK version ("We Are the Greatest", "I Was Made for Lovin' You", "I'm Your Pusher" and "She's the Sun"), albeit editing several of the tracks to fit them in and putting the tracks in reverse chronological order.

* ClusterFBomb: The song "Fuck the Millennium" (NOT a cover of the [=2K=] (better known as Music/TheKLF) song [[NamesTheSame of the same name]]).

* HiddenDepths: Owing to his previous role as a singer in Celebrate the Nun, H.P. knows how to sing very well, as heard on "Break It Up", "Leave in Silence", "Eyes Without a Face", "Summer Wine" and "Second Skin" to name a few. The surprising fact is that despite primarily performing shouts or raps on most of Scooter's songs, his singing has actually improved compared to when he did it regularly.

* OddballInTheSeries: ''Sheffield'', which comes in between the stylistically similar ''Back to the Heavyweight Jam'' and ''We Bring the Noise'', has a noticeably poppier tone to either of them, and in fact, doesn't feel like any of the group's later albums either. It has a discernably OutOfCharacterMoment in the chillout track "She's the Sun" (though well received), as well as the covers of Soft Cell's "Sex Dwarf" and Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra's "Summer Wine" (which are moreorless played straight). The group has expressed dislike of the album and its lead single "I'm Your Pusher" (although the track is quite popular amongst fans especially those in Scotland, who receive a shoutout in it.). The primary reason for ''Sheffield'''s oddness is that the group was enjoying exploring different styles under the pseudonym "Ratty" at the time, and were at doubts as to what Scooter's next direction should be. They ultimately found it when they wrote their next single "Posse (I Need You On The Floor)", which became the formula they followed for the rest of their career.

Scooter are an electronic music group from Hamburg, Germany. The band formed in 1994 by HP Baxxter and Rick J Jordan, after the dissolution of their new wave band Celebrate The Nun. The band was formed when the two members teamed up with producer Ferris Beuhler (real name Soren Buhler) to record a single called Vallée De Larmes, which was a soundalike cover of a French house song by Rene & Gaston released the previous year. The B Side was a song called Cosmos, an original composition. The group played some DJ shows with these two songs. At one show, Rick began playing an original instrumental piece of his, which inspired HP to spontaneously rap lyrics over it. This met with such a great response that the band decided to record it in studio, titling it "Hyper Hyper". This was released as a single and became a big hit, which inspired the members to take Scooter seriously, leading to their first album "...And The Beat Goes On". The band recorded many further singles and three more albums with Buehler, focusing mainly on the happy hardcore, techno and trance styles whilst adding influences from other genres such as rock, new wave, ballads and drum and bass.

In 1998, Buehler left to be replaced by Axel Coon, an event marked with the release of the singles and b sides collection Rough And Tough And Dangerous, and the announcement that it was the beginning of The Second Chapter. The band moved onto a more serious trancier style. Another breakthrough would come in 2001, when their song "Ramp! The Logical Song" became a massive hit worldwide, especially in the UK where they had not had very much success. They followed this up with "Nessaja", which was almost as successful, and a reissue of "Posse (I Need You On The Floor". A compilation album called Push The Beat For This Jam: The Singles, was released there and became very successful too (in Germany, its equivalent release was a 2CD single and B Side collection which did not feature Nessaja).

Coon was replaced by Jay Frog at the time of Nessaja - both members worked on the song, beginning The Third Chapter. The band released several more singles and the album The Stadium Techno Experience in the UK, with dwindling popularity. After the release of the single Jigga Jigga!, which flopped, the band did not release anything in the UK for several years until 2008.

Frog was replaced with Michael Simon in 2007 (The Fourth Chapter). The band released the album The Ultimate Aural Orgasm with him. Their second album with him, Jumping All Over The World, was released in the UK thanks to their popularity on the Clubland tour, and surprised everyone by making Number 1 in the album charts, especially as it was the first time the band had released anything there since 2003. During this time, the band experience massive {{Flanderization}}, with a constant reliance on female sung choruses with high pitched vocals, often singing cover songs without crediting the original artists, and constantly using bouncy, repetitive rhythms called jumpstyle. This had proved to be successful for them occasionally in the past (Ramp! being the biggest example), but on Jumping All Over The World and beyond it was used on almost every song. There is a pretty obvious BrokenBase because of this. The band have released several more albums, incorporating dubstep and r&b influences and further alienating their old fans, HP even claiming he's in it for the money now.

Tired of HP's obsession with writing to a generic formula to make money, Rick J. Jordan announced his plans to leave the band in 2014. He is said to be replaced by DDY, and The Fifth Chapter will begin.

For similar music see: Dune, Blümchen, Charly Lownoise & Mental Theo, Flamman & Abraxis, Party Animals and DJ Paul Elstak.

* AlbumFiller: Scooter has a habit of a joke intro track on every album aside from the first two, and also two or three generic trance tracks towards the end of each album (the 4 Axel Coon albums and The Stadium Techno Experience follow this formula to a tee). On their first LP "And The Beat Goes On", they filled out the album with a Hyper Hyper reprise called "Faster Harder Scooter" (a totally different song from the later "fasterharderscooter")

* BSide: The band has included a previously unreleased track as a B-Side on the majority of their German singles. The majority of them are instrumentals. Scooter's B-Sides are a special case because for many fans, they show the creativity of Rick J Jordan that is often overlooked with their singles. Some of them, in particular "Back In Time", "Bramfeld" and "Giant's Causeway" and "Path" are more popular than some album tracks amongst fans.

*** The Spanish version of Hyper Hyper, which is called On A Spanish Fly Tip.
*** The Spanish version of Endless Summer
*** The Spanish version of Back In The UK, called Back In Villebago

** However, they do have a few straight covers like Depeche Mode's Stripped and Billy Idol's Eyes Without A Face, largely because HP grew up with those songs and they were basically sacred to him. Occasionally they meet this halfway and do a cover like The Chameleon's Second Skin, which keeps the structure of the original song but uses more techno production.

* DubInducedPlothole: A variation that applied to people in the UK. The line "Scooter! Are you Ratty?" in The Logical Song is a reference to the band's pseudonym Ratty, under which they put out two singles "Sunrise (Here I Am)" and "Living On Video" in 2000, prior to Sheffield coming out. "Sunrise" was a big club hit - made more so by the fact [=DJs=] who wouldn't normally play Scooter were playing it. Whilst the band didn't officially indicate their involvement in the Ratty songs at the time, they were subject to a lot of speculation about it. Their connection was confirmed when they issued an alternate mix of Sunrise entitled Sunrise (Ratty's Inferno) on the B-Side of the Scooter single She's The Sun. Now this is relevant because none of the Ratty singles, nor many other Scooter releases were released in the UK, and as a result, everyone in the UK thought the line was "Scooter! Are you ready?".
* DubNameChange: Sort of. In the UK, their cover of Music/{{Supertramp}}'s "The Logical Song" is called The Logical Song, since the name "The Logical Song" is still copyrighted to Music/{{Supertramp}} in the UK. In the US and everywhere else, it's called Ramp! (The Logical Song".

*** They also released an Irish exclusive single called Back In Ireland, which is Back In The UK with the name of the country changed.
*** Jump That Rock! had the title (Whatever You Want) and the 'vs Status Quo' credit added when Status Quo showed their interest in it (also, it was a way around getting sued).
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Their first single Vallée De Larmes was recorded as a project. It is a soundalike instrumental cover of a song by Rene & Gaston from 1993. The style of music is basically French house and not techno at all. Its B Side Cosmos was later used but with a spoken voiceover from HP. It was shortly after this single was released that the band were improvising a tune onstage, and HP began rapping spontaneously. This led to their song Hyper Hyper and the sound they would be known for. Apart from a couple of remixes included on compilations, they have entirely omitted "Vallée" from their discography.
** A stereotype of Scooter is that their singles have high pitched female vocals on the choruses. They did this on two songs in 1995 "Friends" and "Endless Summer", but stopped for several years. They tried it again on 2001's "Posse (I Need You On The Floor)" onwards and it became an unexpected hit, and very nearly every single afterwards has used them. So anybody checking out the band's albums from 1996-2000 will be surprised to hear the lack of high pitched vocals on them, instead HP using far more singing (and when female vocals are used, they are at normal pitch). It is no secret that this is regarded as the band's golden period amongst fans.
** The pre-Scooter group Celebrate The Nun, in addition to being in an 80s new wave style, features all singing and all original songs. Furthermore, HP's lyrics in such tracks as "Ordinary Town" and "She's A Secretary" actually tell coherent stories (albeit in amusingly Broken English). Occasionally, Rick's sister Britt would provide lead vocals (at normal pitch). The group wanted her back for Scooter, but she declined so they got Rick's wife Nikk instead (who performs most of their infamous high pitched vocals).

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: "Countdown" is a recording of H.P. performing a countdown to the new year, complete with fireworks. This seems to have been done purely as the single it appears on ("Apache Rocks The Bottom")was released on New Year's Eve 2005.

* HiddenDepths: Owing to his previous role as a singer in Celebrate The Nun, H.P. knows how to sing very well, as heard on "Break In Up", "Leave In Silence", "Eyes Without A Face", "Summer Wine" and "Second Skin" to name a few. The surprising fact is that despite primarily performing shouts or raps on most of Scooter's songs, his singing has actually improved compared to when he did it regularly.
* IAmTheBand: After the group's longtime music composer Rick J. Jordan left, H.P. (the only original member left) continues to trade on the group's name despite almost exclusively writing lyrics. Many casual fans of Scooter think that the group name is actually H.P.'s stage name, although it may as well be at this point. Early on, he actually did try to avert this - listing the group's members in "Back In the UK" and the single version of "We Are The Greatest" for example.

** In 2013, Rick J. Jordan announced he was leaving the band after the band's tour finishes in January 2014. It is likely he will be replaced by by the band's friend DDY. The website announced that The Fifth Chapter had just begun.
* MemeticMutation: The line "Siberia, the place to be" from The Logical Song has long been ironically remade by (chiefly British) listeners as "[British town], the place to be", with the implication of making an unexciting place sound like an exciting place.

* OddballInTheSeries: "Sheffield", which comes in between the stylistically similar "Back To The Heavyweight Jam" and "We Bring The Noise", has a noticeably poppier tone to either of them, and in fact, doesn't feel like any of the group's later albums either. It has a discernably OutOfCharacterMoment in the chillout track "She's The Sun" (though well received), as well as the covers of Soft Cell's "Sex Dwarf" and Lee Hazelwood & Nancy Sinatra's "Summer Wine" (which are moreorless played straight). The group has expressed dislike of the album and its lead single "I'm Your Pusher" (although the track is quite popular amongst fans especially those in Scotland, who receive a shoutout in it.). The primary reason for "Sheffield"'s oddness is that the group was enjoying exploring different styles under the pseudonym "Ratty" at the time, and were at doubts as to what Scooter's next direction should be. They ultimately found it when they wrote their next single "Posse [I Need You On The Floor]", which became the formula they followed for the rest of their career.

** The legendary "Trance-Atlantic" in ''Mind the Gap''

** Friends has two single versions. One has an intro from HP saying "Scooter! Yeah! followed by the synth melody before going into the main track, and the other begins with piano and the chorus vocals moved to the start. There's also editing in the main body of the song.
** Back In Ireland is a version of Back In The UK with the references to the UK replaced by Ireland.
** Rebel Yell has additional synths throughout much of the song.
** We Are The Greatest has HP speaking over the intro.
** Call Me Manana has an intro in Spanish and samples from a song called "James Brown Is Dead".
** Fuck The Millenium has largely different vocals and a happy hardcore section.
** Aiii Shot The DJ is largely different to the album version I Shot The DJ, with new verse lyrics and quite different music. The chorus is the only thing that really stayed the same.
** Maria (I Like It Loud) has additional vocals from Marc Acadipane.
** Suavemente has vocals, the album version does not.
** "Apache Rocks The Bottom" is a fusion of two "Who's Got The Last Laugh Now?" tracks. It combines the verses of "Rock Bottom" and the chorus of "Apache" with some new elements. The single mix of "Rock Bottom" (which was released in The Netherlands and UK instead), features the original Rock Bottom chorus instead of the Apache one. Furthermore, the version of the track played on their "Excess All Areas" live album is essentially "Apache Rocks The Bottom" with the original "Rock Bottom" coda added at the end.
** The Sound Above My Hair features bagpipes, the album version does not.
* RecursiveImport: The group originally released "Push The Beat For This Jam" as a 2 disc collection of singles and rare material spanning '98-'02, but after the success of "The Logical Song" as a single in the UK, they released an identically titled compilation of the majority of songs on that compilation, plus several earlier ones and the new track "Nessaja" - which made it career-spanning. In their native Germany, the group released a modified version of this compilation - "24 Carat Gold" - which included the tracks omitted from the UK version ("We Are The Greatest", "I Was Made For Lovin' You", "I'm Your Pusher" and "She's The Sun"), albeit editing several of the tracks to fit them in and putting the tracks in reverse chronological order.
* RecycledLyrics: The version of the normally instrumental "R U Happy" on the live record "Encore" features H.P. reciting lines from various old songs such as "Hit The Drum", "Hyper Hyper", "Move Your Ass", "We Take You Higher" and "I'm Raving".
* RecycledSoundtrack: A large part of "Habanera [Big Room Mix]" was the basis for the Original Club mix of "Ramp! The Logical Song", which later got edited down, with lyrics added, into the familiar single mix of "The Logical Song". In fact "Habanera" was intended as a single and released as a promo 12", though "Ramp" won out, so it ended up as a bonus track on the German version of "Push The Beat For This Jam" instead.
** Rick reused the four chord bassline from Celebrate The Nun's track [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz2peVfMCkE "Maybe Tomorrow"]] in a lot of Scooter songs, such as "Move Your Ass", "Let Me Be Your Valentine", "Weekend!", "Hello (Good To Be Back) and "Imaginary Battle". It's a simple enough arpeggiated synth sound, yet works in establishing tension in any song it's used in, and as such is a recognisable CreatorThumbprint.

* ShoutOut: "Weekend!" quotes from Literature/TheLittlePrince. "Hyper Hyper" gives a literal ShoutOut to several popular German [=DJs=].
** Also, the line just before that section, "We want to say a big shout to US!", isn't referring to America. US stands for Ultra-Sonic, the band whose song "Annihilating Rhythm (Do You Love Your Hardcore?)" was the inspiration for "Hyper Hyper"
** The band has so many shout-outs to the KLF, they're practically a tribute act. Just off the top of my head: "Weekend" begins with the horns from "America: What Time Is Love?", and the line "Respect to the man in the ice cream van!" refers to the KLF's "...and they drive an ice cream van" from "Justified and Ancient". "Imaginary Battle" samples the line "Take me, uh-huh" from "Church of the KLF". The shout of "3 AM!" at the beginning of Nessaja is taken from the KLF's "3 AM Eternal". The last line of "Aiii Shot The DJ" is "Kick out the jams!", a phrase the KLF also used in their original incarnation as the JAMs ("Kick out the JAMs!"). "Fuck The Millenium" begins with machine gun fire from "3 AM Eternal", has H.P. introduce himself as "The Candyman", a song from the second KLF album (when they were the JAMs). H.P. also uses the phrase "Furthermore known as..." in a way similar to the KLF's "Furthermore known as the JAMs" from "Last Train to Trancentral". And, of course, the song's title is taken from the KLF song "Fuck The Millenium". And that's just off the top of my head. Seeing a pattern here?
*** The lyrics of "Aiii Shot the DJ" are based on the speaking style of Ali G in ''Series/DaAliGShow'', who was popular at the time.
*** HP has been known to make shoutouts to the band's 'posse' (fans) in various countries, even when said albums aren't even released in those countries. An example is how at the start of I'm Your Pusher he shouts out to the 'Scotland Posse'.
* StopBeingStereotypical: A common complaint of fans is that the band rely far too much on songs where the verse is a rap about how great HP is filled with WordSalad, the chorus is a cover sung by a high pitched female, and most of the rest of the song is ripped off from something else. The band's music was generally not like this in the mid to late 90s.
* WritersBlock: The band have acknowledged that they had this on the album Sheffield, due to being bored of their previous styles but not sure what to change to. They felt the Scooter name was so associated with happy hardcore that they put out club singles under pseudonyms like Ratty and Guess Who? They also had it more pronounced on We Bring The Noise, where every track is written in a different style precisely for the reason that the band didn't have many ideas in any particular style. This was also why they reintroduced the high pitched voice for Posse (I Need You On The Floor), which turned out to fill that creative gap for over a decade (much to the [[BrokenBase annoyance]] of some of their fanbase).

* B-Side: The band has included a previously unreleased track as a B-Side on the majority of their German singles. The majority of them are instrumentals. Scooter's B-Sides are a special case because for many fans, they show the creativity of Rick J Jordan that is often overlooked with their singles. Some of them, in particular "Back In Time", "Bramfeld" and "Giant's Causeway" and "Path" are more popular than some album tracks amongst fans.

Frog was replaced with Michael Simon in 2007 (The Fourth Chapter). The band released the album The Ultimate Aural Orgasm with him. Their second album with him, Jumping All Over The World, was released in the UK thanks to their popularity on the Clubland tour, and surprised everyone by making Number 1 in the album charts, especially as it was the first time the band had released anything there since 2003. During this time, the band experience massive {Flanderization} , with a constant reliance on female sung choruses with high pitched vocals, often singing cover songs without crediting the original artists, and constantly using bouncy, repetitive rhythms called jumpstyle. This had proved to be successful for them occasionally in the past (Ramp! being the biggest example), but on Jumping All Over The World and beyond it was used on almost every song. There is a pretty obvious BrokenBase because of this. The band have released several more albums, incorporating dubstep and r&b influences and further alienating their old fans, HP even claiming he's in it for the money now.

*** They also did a surprisingly good cover medley of Tuxedomoon's "No Tears" combined with Marc Almond's "Tears Run Rings" which they called "My Eyes Are Dry". It worked because they added a lot of new instrumental parts to it that fit with the mood of the song, and thankfully, HP used serious vocals and they didn't use any high pitched female vocals in it.

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: "Countdown" is a recording of H.P. performing a countdown to the new year, complete with fireworks. This seems to have been done purely as the single was released on New Year's Eve 2005.