Harald Faltermeyer's 1985 hit "Axel F" revisited by a frog doing car noises. In spring 2005 there was no getting away from Crazy Frog. In the UK, he even knocked Coldplay off the number one spot on the charts.

In 2000, Hamburg-based producer Alex Christensen took a Russian techno hit released by Ruki Vverh! in 1998, hired three musicals singers to re-record it in English - and stormed the charts in 19 countries with "Around the World".

In 1990, dance floors pretty much around the world heaved to the sound of "Ooops Up" courtesy of Eurodance supremos Snap! produced by Frankfurt DJs Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti. The sound was fresh even if its refrain wasn't. It was based on a song by US funksters The Gap Band that dated back over ten years.

In 1978 Donna Summer and maverick producer Giorgio Moroder scored a hit with a disco version of "MacArthur Park", first recorded by British actor Richard Harris in 1968. It took Donna Summer to the top of the US charts.

You could say even the original 1970 version by the Jamaican rocksteady band The Melodians was a cover of sorts - its lyrics come from an Old Testament psalm. When whizz German producer Frank Farian rerecorded "By the Rivers of Babylon" with Boney M., the single went on to sell 4 million copies.

In 1973 US soul singer Ann Peebles "I Can't Stand the Rain" reached the US and UK charts. But it wasn't until Frank Farian rerecorded it in his Munich studio five years later with the band Eruption that it got to number one in Germany, Australia and Belgium.

In 2007 German Eurodance act Cascada's single "Everytime We Touch" was a hit in the US and went platinum - but wasn't even released in Germany until a year later. Interestingly, Scottish singer Maggie Reilly's original version from 1992 was much more successful in Germany than in the UK.

In 1996 German producer Frank Farian was looking for a hit that would turn three good-looking young men from Florida into stars, and eventually found what he was after in his own archives: a year earlier he'd produced the single "Where Do You Go" for La Bouche. He gave it a Latin makeover, called his new band No Mercy - and saw his remix reach gold status in the US and the UK.

"Girl You Know It's True" by Milli Vanilli was the sound of the summer in 1988. The single went platinum in the US, and gold in Canada, Germany and Sweden. Not many were aware it was a cover of a single released by US crew Numarx in 1987, which had been popular in German clubs.

Is there anyone who can't sing along to Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5"? He allegedly wrote the lyrics in 5 minutes flat, setting the words to music composed in 1949 by Cuban mambo king Perez Prado. The Bavarian reboot reached number one in more than 20 countries.