2004 – 87th Segment: “1970”

In this series we present 100 songs which have gone down in the history of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. On Czech Radio’s web pages you can find a poll, in which you can vote for the best hit from the past century. We continue with the year 2004.

On May 1 the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the EU.

On August 4 President Václav Klaus appointed a new government headed by Stanislav Gross.

From August 13 to 29 the Olympic Games took place in Athens. The Czech Republic won nine medals.

Photo: B&M

In 2004 the band Chinaski released their extremely successful compilation album titled Premium 1993-2003. It featured a new track, 1970, which became one of the songs of the year and referred to the generation of Czechoslovaks born in the early 1970s; they were called Husák's children, after then Communist leader Gustáv Husák. He was in charge during normalisation, the re-imposition of hardline communism in the wake of the Prague Spring liberalisation movement.

Chinaski had a connection to that period, with singer Michal Malátný and co-founder Pavel Grohman having been born in 1970 themselves.

Vote for the best song of the century!