Jan Müller wonders what would happen if sports associations rated music as doping.
Who of you knows the radio show “Klassik-Pop-et cetera”? I love her very much! As soon as the enchanting introductory melody by Horst Jankowski sounds in the big band sound, the day is saved for me. Every Saturday from 10:05 a.m., prominent guests play their favorite songs on this show. Many people proceed based on their biography. And that almost always moves me immensely. In 2025 I was allowed to create a show myself. It’s a shame my parents can’t live to see this, I thought. Probably no one knows you better than your own parents. However, I still have the desire to reveal myself to them.
Back to the show: In the best case scenario, you get to know interesting music in addition to the beautiful stories. But to be honest, a lot of things repeat themselves. The guests repeatedly choose, for example, “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, “Heroes” by David Bowie or Louis Armstrong with “What A Wonderful World”. But why not? After all, these are great songs.
The guest on the first episode of 2026 also started with the Armstrong song. The presenter had previously announced that 2026 would be a “super year for sport” and that one athlete per month would be asked to appear in front of the microphone on the show this year. A female luger was the first to step in front of the microphone. However, their selection – I have to say it so clearly – taught me fear. Zlatko and Jürgen, Kontra K, Fargo and others. I certainly don’t want to rise above other people’s tastes, but the combination of blaring melodies, penetrating beats and mixed-up calendar sayings exceeded an inner limit for me.
But it’s just music. Apparently this has a completely different purpose for the athlete than it does for me. In one of her presentations, she reported that she uses music to motivate and improve performance. I’m surprised I was surprised by this. After all, the list of doping substances that athletes use is long: cocaine, Ritalin, blood, Scho-Ka-Cola, metabolism modulators, growth hormones and dehydrochlormethyltestosterone. Why should music, of all things, be missing from this list?
The question arises as to what would happen to the music landscape if sports associations assessed the use of music as a doping agent and then banned it accordingly. These would probably be bad times for Felix Jaehn, Tiësto & Co. Slowcore and dream pop bands like Codeine and Cigarettes After Sex, on the other hand, would certainly have little to fear. Your music is unsuitable for improving performance. It is also interesting that doping when making music is at least (still) a tolerated practice. It has been pursued intensively by legal and illegal means since Robert Johnson and Hank Williams.
During sporting events themselves, music is usually used as a mood enhancer. For example with fan chants in the stadium. But sometimes music has a much greater value. For example, as the boxers’ warm-up music before their fights. When Samuel Peter from Nigeria comes in with the song “The Harder They Come” by Jimmy Cliff, it’s about more than just mood. I also think it’s great that Wladimir Klitschko entered the ring to the song “Emporio” by Robert Bartha in a total of eight World Cup fights. “We feel the power of Emporio / We will discover all the strange within us and make it right,” the lyrics say. The whole thing is sung so wonderfully gay that afterwards you wish for something much nicer than a boxing match. Thank you, Vladimir!
It is wise to study philosophy alongside sports science. Last but not least, there are sports in which music plays a very central role. Dance sports should be mentioned here in particular. The German Dance Sports Association was founded in 1921 and has 226,000 members. I’m almost inclined to ask Mr. Tim Rausche, the president of this association, why dance athletes often smile so frozenly while they practice their sport. Is this done for concentration reasons, is it an association instruction or because the dancers, while practicing their sport, enjoy realizing that it is a fun idea to practice dance as a sport?
By the way, you can see where it leads if you take the competitive idea of dancing to the end in the very good melodrama “Only horses are given the coup de grace” by Sydney Pollack from 1969. Something like that couldn’t happen while sledding. At some point you arrive in the valley. I’m excited to see what ups and downs the music selection of the other sports guests on the radio show mentioned above will take us to.
This column first appeared in Musikexpress issue 3/2026.
