Johann "Hans" Hölzel

 Johann "Hans" Hölzel, better known as Falco (February 19, 1957 – February 6, 1998)

Falco had several international hits including "Rock Me Amadeus", "Der Kommissar", "Vienna Calling", "Jeanny", "The Sound of Musik", "Coming Home (Jeanny Part II, One Year Later)", and posthumously "Out of the Dark". "Rock Me Amadeus" reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1986, making him the only artist whose principal language was German to score a vocal number-one hit in the United States (Bert Kaempfert reached No. 1 in January 1961 with the instrumental "Wonderland by Night"). According to his estate, he has sold 20 million albums and 40 million singles, which makes him the best-selling Austrian singer of all time. In 1987, Falco went on the Emotional world tour ending in Japan. In the same year he sang a duet with Brigitte Nielsen, "Body Next to Body"; the single was a Top 10 hit in German-speaking countries. The album Wiener Blut ("Viennese Blood") was released in 1988 but it did not get much publicity outside Germany and Austria. Starting in the early 1990s, Falco lived in the Dominican Republic, where he worked on his last album from 1995 to 1998. Through the 1980s and into the '90s, he became dependent on alcohol and cocaine. When under the influence he was unreliable at best and abusive at worst. Musician Ferdi Bolland recalls that Falco was often so severely intoxicated that the writing process revolved around his "inability to be coherent, to even stand for a long time." Despite pleas from his manager and collaborators to get help, Falco stubbornly refused.

He had a brief marriage with a woman whom he thought had his child, a girl. However, a paternity test would later prove that he was not the father. Falco died of severe injuries received on February 6, 1998, 13 days before his 41st birthday, when his Mitsubishi Pajero collided with a bus on the road linking the towns of Villa Montellano and Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. At the time of his death he was planning a comeback, which was successful with the posthumously released album Out of the Dark (Into the Light). His body was returned to Austria and buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery.