Georg Kajanus is a Norwegian composer, singer/songwriter, and lyricist, renowned for penning hits like A Glass of Champagne and Girls Girls Girls for his band Sailor. Throughout his illustrious career, Kajanus' compositions have reached the top of the UK, European, and Australian charts a remarkable 28 times across the 1970s, 1990s, and 2008.
Born in Norway, Kajanus has lived in various cities, including Trondheim, St Tropez, Paris, and Montreal, before settling in London in the late 1960s. It was in London that he formed the folk/rock group Eclection, one of the few British acts to be signed by the American label Elektra Records.
Five years later, Kajanus drew inspiration from his youthful experiences of Paris' vibrant nightlife to create Sailor, his second and highly successful foray into the music world. As the lead singer and songwriter, Sailor released five albums, earning numerous gold and silver records for its success in the UK, Europe, and Australia.
Kajanus then left Sailor to form the electronica group DATA with vocalists Francesca and Phillipa Boulter. DATA's classically orientated title track, Opera Electronica, was featured as the theme music for the short film Towers of Babel, which received a BAFTA nomination in 1982 and won the Silver Hugo Award at the Chicago International Film Festival of the same year.
DATA released two more albums, the experimental 2-TiME and Elegant Machinery, with the former's Living Inside Me becoming a major hit in the 1980s club scene in the USA. Opera Electronica and 2-TiME were re-released by Angel Air Records in 2017.
In the mid-1980s, Kajanus continued his experimentation with electronic music, collaborating with Henry Marsh of Sailor on the short-lived combo...And The Mamluks. The group achieved some nightclub success in the USA with the Razormaid remix of the track Hassan.
Kajanus reformed Sailor in 1990 and the band went on to achieve further success in Europe, releasing two albums, Sailor and Street Lamp, on BMG-Ariola. He also collaborated with Tim Dry on the poetic-techno duo Noir, which released the single Walking, featured in the Channel 4 TV series Feast.
Kajanus composed the soundtracks for two documentaries by award-winning German filmmaker Monika Treut, Didn't Do It For Love and Gendernauts. His compositions, A Glass of Champagne and Girls Girls Girls, have been featured in various movies and TV shows, as well as TV commercial campaigns.
Currently, Kajanus is working on three projects: Sailor, a musical drama for stage and screen set in post-World War II Marseille; People Industry, a classical musical exploring the extraordinary world of Homo Sapiens; and Silver Tongued Heroes, an electro-techno musical featuring the music of DATA.
