Rasputin

Frank Farian wrote "Rasputin" with George Reyam and Fred Jay, shaping it around the life of Grigori Rasputin, the friend and advisor to Tsar Nicholas II in the early 20th century. Released on 28 August 1978 as the second single from Boney M.'s album Nightflight to Venus, the song casts its subject as a playboy, mystical healer and political manipulator. Farian's American friend Bill Swisher, then a soldier in Germany, provided spoken vocals at the bridge in the style of a newsreader, having also guested on the band's singles "Ma Baker" and "El Lute".

The lyrics follow Rasputin's rise at court, including Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna's hope that he would heal her hemophiliac son, Tsarevich Alexei. It repeats a contemporary rumour of an affair between Rasputin and Alexandra, though no verifiable evidence supports it, and ends with a modified account of his assassination by Felix Yusupov, Vladimir Purishkevich and Dmitri Pavlovich on 16 December 1916, in which he is fatally shot after surviving poisoned wine. Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore called it an excellent introduction to Russian court politics of the period. A debate arose in the 1970s over the melody's similarity to the Turkish song "Kâtibim", which the band denied, though lead singer Liz Mitchell later said they had bought it from a Tunisian.

"Rasputin" topped the charts in Germany and Austria, reached No. 2 in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, and gave Boney M. their second and last Australian number one. It failed to chart in the United States despite peaking at No. 7 in Canada.