Aida was at Sido’s Christmas show, rapped along loudly to “Carmen” and wondered what actually constitutes family entertainment.
He got started just in time for St. Nicholas: Sido is organizing Christmas shows again, a tradition he started in 2018. And in Spirit, actually since the beginning of his career, never forget “Christmas song” from the sampler “Aggro Ansang No. 3” – which of course opened the Christmas show. I have to admit that it was my first time there, on assignment for another newspaper.
I belong to Generation Aggro Berlin and Generation Sido, but if I’m honest: When I was a teenager I would never have admitted to listening to Sido. Although, of course, friends burned me indexed songs onto CDs and we were all able to rap along to every line of “Finally Weekend” from memory. And later? For me, over the years he has become a nice mainstream uncle with songs like “Pictures in Head” who has aged much more likably than his companions (what do I mean by that? Look at “Times Change You” by Bushido and “Blutzbrüdaz” with Sido and B-Tight one after the other and you’ll know). Honestly, I had a surprising amount of fun during this fever dream, even alone and sober on the rank with my little notepad in hand.
But I had no idea that Sido and his Christmas shows have now become absolute family entertainment. The MC of the evening, a standup comedian, asked right at the beginning who the youngest visitor would be on the first evening of the fifteen (!) scheduled, sold-out (!) shows. Answer: a six-year-old. And suddenly it struck me: all around me were parents with their often quite small, probably even younger children.
Gifts for everyone
Great: My parents took me to Iranian pop concerts in southern Germany when I was little, and at some point I always ended up sleeping in a pile of jackets. Experiencing something like that with your parents is a great thing. Seeing your parents liberated, detached and experiencing art is a great thing. Because as soon as we realized that the youngest person in the room was six years old, the jokes started at the Christmas show about whether the “A***f*** song” would be played given how young people were in the audience. And that didn’t stop the whole evening, not from the MC and not from Sido himself, who kept bringing children on stage to recite poems or sing Christmas carols and be rewarded with merch, chocolate or even really big Christmas presents.
And then I have to ask myself: Am I a total philistine?
Because I admit it: the whole thing irritated me deeply. Yes, also as someone who finds things like that quite funny, who is a fan of pretty, eh, transgressive music, who likes to go dancing in clubs, where other things can happen besides me. I thought I had seen it all, I was super liberal and nothing irritated or surprised me more. But: children in the room with explicit lines about anal sex and prostitution, I suddenly seem to become a clamp.
Is “Carmen” really age-appropriate?
But that’s how it is: have shared experiences with your children? Great. Introduce children to music that means a lot to you? Great. But are “Strip for me” and my eternal secret favorite “Carmen” really age-appropriate? Or is that a completely stupid question? Does “A***f***song” – which was played as an encore at the very end, the room was still full of families – really go past the children, who don’t really understand it anyway? I don’t know either. Friends of mine with children argue back and forth in my DMs, some have even been to these shows with their children in previous years and then covered their ears during songs like this or sang something else to them. But does everyone do that? Didn’t look like that.
Maybe I’m really a little uptight, because when I think back to myself at that age, I remember what we used to sing in the schoolyard. And that wasn’t Rolf Zuckowski, but rather Tic Tac Toe in the late nineties. My first maxi single was “Lick mich am A, B, Zeh”, an angry, very, very explicit reckoning with a guy who doesn’t want to use a condom and a passionate plea for safe sex. At the age of six, I didn’t really have a clue what it all meant, but me and my friends still rapped along to this and all the other, pretty open-hearted tic-tac-toe songs in the locker room after gym class.
Editorial recommendations
Tic Tac Toe instead of Rolf Zuckowski
Sure, today I look back on the content and thank Tic Tac Toe from the bottom of my heart for the message (stay safe, friends!), which is a little different than “A****f***song”. But was it age-appropriate? Pretty sure not.
And I think back to the nineties and noughties in general, also because Thomas Gottschalk has just announced his retirement from the stage due to cancer (and his retirement from retirement immediately afterwards). Because the big television event for me was of course always “Wetten, dass?” with Gottschalk. And anyone who hasn’t spent the last few months under a rock has probably heard the discussions about his treatment of female guests in the studio. Today he denies publicly, resolutely and loudly that he has ever been abusive in any way. Various supercuts on the Internet speak a different language, which from today’s perspective show the behavior at that time to be quite difficult and even greasy.
But I ask myself: What is worse? The unquestioned normalization of sexist behavior, not just at Gottschalk but everywhere? Or completely exaggerated porn-rap comedy like Sido, embedded between encouraging songs, ballads about great love and gifts? I honestly don’t know. And it’s probably just none of my business. But I still sing along to “Carmen” a little more quietly when there are children standing next to it. Call me a philistine!