There lived a certain band in Europe long ago, they were big and strong, and in their music a flaming glow...
But if you told Boney M star Liz Mitchell that her 1978 hit Rasputin would become an internet sensation in 2022, she would never have believed you.
Almost nine million fans have created TikTok dance videos to the song – and over the last year or so they have been viewed an amazing 22billion times.
The idea is simple – mimic and adapt the dance by Liz’s band pal Bobby Farrell from back in the day.
The funny thing is, Liz had no idea how to access TikTok.
And she recalls the time when she thought making a living as a singer was a pipedream in itself.
Liz was one of the Windrush generation of Caribbean immigrants who came to the UK.
She says: “Coming from Jamaica, I didn’t even know that you could earn money by performing or being on stage.”
Now Liz, 70 next week, chuckles as she reflects on her new-found success after 50 years in showbiz.
Speaking from her Oxfordshire home, she says: “My grandson – 10-year-old Avel – was seeing this song all over TikTok and he tried to show me how to find it, but it was impossible! I have no idea how to use it – I don’t even use Facebook.
“We have this whole new generation that is following Boney M and he was really excited to show me.
“My grandkids do love our music – which kind of gives it a little bit of magic as well, doesn’t it?
“Because it lets them see it and I can share my memories too.
“But to them, the good thing is that Grandma is very ordinary. After all that hype, I bring them right back down to, ‘Your Grandma is just Grandma. She’s very much a human being’.”
Boney M were superstars of the 1970s and early ’80s. They split, but reunions and new band members meant they never really went away.
And Liz is thrilled that a new army of fans is lapping up Boney M’s hits – which also include Ma Baker, Sunny, Daddy Cool and Mary’s Boy Child.
The band’s YouTube channel has seen viewing figures more than double to 56.1million, while it has 12.2million unique Spotify listeners – three times as many as Take That.
Liz says the resurgence of ’70s and ’80s hits, including Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill – a UK No1 after featuring in Netflix ’s Stranger Things – is because of the “timelessness of music to lift people out of dark places”.
She smiles: “Music really does lift people up and take them out of the sad place. I think Covid did just that – it brought people into a place that they never expected they could be in mentally.
“The stories I hear on the road make me realise this music has passed down the generations, including now the ones in my own family, and that’s very special to me.”
Boney M was formed in 1976 in Germany, where Liz and fellow Brit singers Marcia Barrett and Maizie Williams were on the music scene.
With frontman Bobby, they became disco giants with platinum - selling hits like Rivers of Babylon and its hit B-side Brown Girl in the Ring. At their peak, Boney M even outsold ABBA.
The Rasputin remix by North London DJ and producer Majestic has seen it chart in 142 countries, including No1 in the UK.
Liz – managed by her husband Thomas, 74 – says fans at live shows still love the song despite the war in Ukraine.
It describes Russian mystic and political manipulator Rasputin.
Lyrics include “most people looked at him with terror and with fear” and “oh, those Russians”.
Liz admits the war made her rethink the song, especially when fans reminded her of the lyrics. She says: “We did a show in Romania and I kept getting asked if we would perform Rasputin.
“So I was really in doubt about whether I should sing the song – then I realised we’re talking about a man who did what he did in his time and he’s no longer alive. And we’re telling his story.
“So it was easy for me to say to the audience Putin may be very wrong in what he’s doing. There are just no words to describe people’s suffering. But the song is historical.
“And people love the song. I did a gig last week and the crowd went crazy for it. But people can separate it from what is happening now.”
The gig was in front of 15,000 fans in Germany. Nudging 50 years of stardom is all a long way from the upbringing Liz experienced.
She came to the UK aged 11, after growing up with her grandparents in Jamaica.
Her parents were already here and they had an emotional reunion with Liz at London’s Waterloo Station – right where the Windrush statue stands today.
Liz, who spent her teenage years in Harlesden, west London, feels an intense anger over the Windrush scandal, which five years ago saw hundreds denied the right to remain in the UK despite living and working here for decades.
She says: “It was devastating, not just for me but for all the immigrants from around the world in this country. Some of my family and friends had to fight to stay because they didn’t have the right documents, but I know of some people who did get sent back.”
Liz was an up-and-coming singer when she headed to Berlin after several failed auditions in England.
She performed in the chorus line of rock musical Hair and befriended fellow wannabe and future pop superstar Donna Summer.
But it was five years later that German producer Frank Farian asked Liz to front his new project on a track called Sunny.
It marked the birth of Boney M.
And the rest, as they say, is history. The original four-piece line-up famously included frontman Farrell, with his distinctive Afro. He died, aged 61, in 2010.
Remarkably, he and Rasputin passed away on the same date, December 30, and in the same city – St Petersburg, Russia.
Liz admits not everything was perfect when Boney M formed.
She recalls racial abuse – and a lack of professional guidance.
She says: “Racism is a thing wherever you go. When I was a girl in Germany in the ’70s, I was a little naive and always tried to rise above the obvious.
"I’m one of those black people who probably knows you’re looking at my skin colour or you’re looking at my eyes or maybe you’re looking at my teeth and I won’t say anything.”
But then Liz always let her music do the talking... as 22 billion internet fans will happily testify.
