Suflera’s booth released an album in 1997 “Nothing hurts like life”, which was a huge box office hit. Over a million copies were sold in the country. There is a song on the album “Such a tango” (check!). Although it was not a promotional single, it was liked by the listeners the most.
The band itself did not expect such a turn of events, because the composition had previously been chosen as the main single Romuald Lipka and Tomasz Zeliszewski, “One Time”. I admit it myself Krzysztof Cugowskiwho sang the song:
“Why not! After all, on the album ‘Nothing hurts like life’, which includes ‘Takie tango’, there is information: ‘Contains the hit: ‘One Time’. We were hoping that this song would become a hit, more so because it had already been promoted. It was supposed to be the locomotive of the entire album. Reality surprised us. But I guess it always works that way. Nothing that results from cold calculation ends in a spectacular success,” he said in an interview with Plejada.
Almost every family had the album “Nothing Hurts, Just Like Life” at home – Poles literally went crazy about the album. The frontman admits that it was a time of piracy, so more than a million copies could have been sold. Moreover, the popularity of physical records was declining, and the success should be traced to this final period of the medium – soon, people stopped buying records and switched to the Internet.
“Taki tango” allowed the musicians to repair their home budgets. Cugowski, however, regrets that Polish conditions are not American – the success of “Tango” was enormous, but not to such an extent that he did not have to work for the rest of his life.
“We sold over a million copies in official circulation, which was a great result for a small country. Probably the same number passed through markets and stadiums to the left. And this actually translated into a lot of money. Of course, not the kind we could live on for the rest of my life. This is not America. If we had recorded such a song in the United States, today I would be lying on an island under a palm tree and doing nothing. And since Polish realities are what they are, we could have built houses with the money we earned then and replaced our cars with better ones,” he says .
Despite respect for the recording that changed their lives, “Takie tango” is not one of Cugowski’s favorite songs. “However, I am a rock singer. I have nothing against pop songs, I respect “Takie tango” because it changed my financial situation, but if I don’t have to sing this song, I don’t do it,” he admits.
Let us remind you that “Takie tango” is a song written by R. Lipko and Andrzej Mogielnicki. The votes of PR1 listeners voted it the hit of the 25th anniversary of Free Poland. In 1997, it received a Fryderyk award in the “Song of the Year” category, and in 2009 it was selected by Budka Suflera fans as a hit of the group’s 35th anniversary. The clip was created in the Salt Mine in Bochnia.