David Hasselhoff has told the German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur that he is recording "a couple of heavy metal songs" for his next studio album. The 66-year-old "Baywatch" and "Knight Rider" star said: "Why not? I do not have an album title yet, but it should read: 'Everything is allowed'. I do everything. Because I can. Because I want to."
Hasselhoff has a successful singing career in Germany and neighboring Austria, where, in 1985, his debut album, "Night Rocker", unexpectedly shot to No. 1 on the local chart. His second and third albums, "Lovin' Feelings" and "Looking For Freedom", eventually topped out at No. 5 on the album chart in West Germany, as well as being immensely popular in East Germany. The single "Looking For Freedom" was a hit, reaching No. 1 on the German chart, and was seen by many Germans on both sides of the Iron Curtain as a makeshift pro-unity song, according to The Post.
Even though Hasselhoff is of German descent — there's a village named Hasselhof outside Frankfurt — it wasn't his ethnic connection that resonated. "I think Germans rather like the American-ness about him," Hanna Pilarczyk, a culture writer for Der Spiegel, told The Hollywood Reporter. "Also, his music is very simple and it's something to clap along to. Germans like to clap along to very straightforward rhythms."
Back in 2014, Hasselhoff was invited to perform at the Austrian hard rock and heavy metal festival Nova Rock, where he appeared after IRON MAIDEN. He told Kurier.at at the time that he was a heavy metal fan. "I like IRON MAIDEN and METALLICA," he said. "That's the kind of music I like to hear."
Last fall, MINISTRY leader Al Jourgensen revealed that he teamed up with DJ Swamp to remix Hasselhoff's cover of Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline". "It was the most surreal project I've ever been involved with," Jourgensen told Billboard. "I didn't even have to take acid, and I felt like I was trippin' balls. David Hasselhoff has a new album coming out, some originals and some covers, and for whatever reason — and this is the part that still perplexes me since I haven't met David Hasselhoff yet — he decided I would be the perfect person to mix this. [Laughs] So it's, like, 'I'm game! I'll take the challenge. This could be cool.' And sure enough, man, as soon as I heard it, I felt like I was on some of Timothy Leary's best MDMA I've ever been on."