That is why the Macarena is experiencing a surprising renaissance. Julia Friese’s new column.
Three observations:
1. You are Yapper, I do hits without much talking
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The lines “With us all from a plate / Germany has a new bestseller” should have met them somewhere in the summer of 2025. They come from the Berliner Zah1de. She is fourteen years old and currently has 8.5 million followers on Tiktok. She has been signed by Universal since the end of 2024. Her SOUFT meme rap is a kind of vocabulary book for any contemporary slang. So your fourth track is a banger – so it also says in “Zahide did it better”. A song that was a comment that was at the same time in the spring of 2025 under every third Tikok – after Zahide danced a trend that the Tikoker Chiara had also danced. You have to know: A trend on Tikkok says that you continue a certain meme, i.e. imitating a just popular dance, sound or sketch, or even: puts a just popular comment.
The comment was independent, no matter what was posted: “Zahide did it better” or “Zahide won this trend” could be read underneath. On Tikkok – as in real life – it is not in demand to do something completely own. Zahide then picks up these reactions in their lyrics. So her music arises a little like Pollesch-Theaterpieces: she is already the director, but at all times susceptible to what people around them post, or “yaps”-that’s English, and actually thinks yapping, but you say yaps instead of loving. Do you check The correct answer to this is no longer: yes, man. But: check.
2. Yo, Macarena, Happy the thirtieth then
A mash-up producer named Philemon “Zahide Did It Better” mixed with the summer hit from 1995 on YouTube: Los del Rios “Macarena (Bayside Boys remix)”. And what can you say: Philemon Won this trend. Because the “Macarena” version shoots even more than Zahid’s original. “Macarena” is strange in the air again and again this year: The iconic “Macarena” music video: White background, many women and two men dance, with the women wearing short, abdominal shiny nineties. At the end of 2021, the video was reversed by the American “Vogue” with Bad Bunny.
This has now been deleted by the “Vogue” page. Without any explanation. The fans debated. And there is the dance called the “Woke Macarena”, which a tictoker has come up with the song “Take a Sexy Picture of Me” by Irish singer Cmat, who then quickly became a trend, to whom people like IT girl Julia Fox (“Down the Drain”, Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Lola Young (“Messy”, 2024) dedicated.
3. Mater Dolorosa? Dolor Feminarum!
It is interesting to “Macarena” that the song has actually been available since 1993. In the UN-Remixed original by Los Del Rios, he tells of a fun-loving, but just rebellious young woman who was in favor of the La-Movida movement-i.e. Christian, patriotic and patriarchal virtues in favor of her freedom. The Remix of the Bayside Boys from 1995, which then became famous, made this, and thus changed the meaning, says Macarena as a purely amusement hedonist who cheated on her boyfriend.
It is also interesting that the namesake, the macarena of Seville, i.e. the Christian, patriarchal mamor figure and patron saint of the Macarena Brotherhood in 2025, also experienced a remake: a restorer had her face cleaned as usual, but now also extend her eyelashes. And hundreds took to the streets in June, demonstrated in front of the basilica. The macarena was processed three times within a week to calm the angry believers. But where were they when the “Macarena” text was rewritten?
This column first appeared in the music express edition 9/2025.