Ob Germany in its current form is still the land of poets and thinkers – the assessment originally came from a French intellectual in the 18th century – cannot be decided at this point. However, it can hardly be doubted that German pop lyrics have not recently attracted attention due to their philosophical or poetic depth. However, an excessively high level of reflection is not expected from the pop either. If, on the other hand, you happen to end up in a playlist with Austrian alternative pop music on Spotify, you can start thinking: apparently it works differently in German. Are the Austrians the better philosophers in pop music, the deeper thinkers?
Take, for example, the following passage from the song “Eh ok” by the famous Graz band Granada. At the end of the song it says:
Everything is like that, everything is like that
Created out of nothing
As are all of us and our thoughts
It’s just everything, just everything
Wild speculation though
I think we’re doing it right
Jo wos suima then no sogn
On an intellectual level, metaphysical considerations are combined with the Kantian borderline to the speculative under smooth reggae rhythms, whereby the last two lines breathe the spirit of Ludwig Wittgenstein through and through. So he wrote in the “Philosophical Investigations” (217): “Having exhausted the justifications, I have now arrived at the hard rock, and my spade is turning back. I am then inclined to say: ‘That’s just how I act’”.
However, according to our unsystematic research, the thinker’s crown of pop is currently due to Nino Mandl aka Der Nino from Vienna with his song “It’s always about perfection”. It is a song of which one only understands half the first time you hear it – the content, mind you, because Mandl really makes an effort with High German here – but the other half is so stimulating that one can hardly avoid the deeper content of the song to trace a little.
Unusually devoted lecture
The fact that caution is required with this Nino from Vienna, that irony, irresponsibility and thus also pseudo-philosophy are to be expected is not only shown by the difficulty of embedding this stage name in a journalistic text, but also by a brief overview of his previous work. There are next to deliberately awkward music video parodies numerous nonsense texts, the most beautiful one that follows Interview Statement Mandls illustrate: “Well, if you ask how do you get the text: just pick up a guitar and sing something”.
That’s probably how the completely absurd lyrics to “Johnny Ramone” on Mandl’s album “Immer noch better than Spinat” came about. But even in this song, similar to Granada, a Wittgensteinian language skepticism is expressed, which is also found in Karl Valentin and Falco in a modified form. The Nino lines “What else should we sing/It’s all already been sung” unmistakably quote the basically brilliant verses by Falco from the song “Emotional”:
What else can I tell you?
Everything has already been said
Without us we are worth half
We walk by and don’t see it
#Pop #Anthology #monk #warrior