First Clueso doesn’t hear anything from himself for half a decade, and then he announces two albums within a year. DEJA VU ½ is the first half of this release offensive by an artist who managed to become one of the biggest German pop stars, but still didn’t completely give up his famous indie credibility. How Thomas Hübner, how the Erfurt native has to stand in the passport, manages this is not entirely clear, but the new album provides the titular déjà vu. His lovers are almost as harmless as those of Max Giesinger or Johannes Oerding.
But where they sink into the swamp of clichés, Clueso always just manages to make it to the shore where the halfway cool guys have lit their campfire with a slightly strange formulation, a not completely exhausted metaphor, an always fashionable melancholy. When the loved one goes missing, the protagonist is “fucked” (“Whenever you’re not there”), when a new love ends too quickly, it falls out of space (“Free Fall”), and once Bonnie Tyler is finally understood (“This Life”).
But the biggest secret is probably that Clueso performs these somehow not then punches with a uniquely charming self-confidence that even the Auwoohahohuh refrain from “Crazy Summer” can’t be heard. And once you get used to the fact that every song chugs warmly and softly through the wellness area at a comfortable mid-tempo, then you can definitely appreciate the promise of not being bothered with unpleasant news from the real world – and would like to be there in the “record shop” that Clueso wants to open: “We’re hanging out in our little oasis, even if everything is falling apart outside.” Escapism has rarely sounded more pleasant.
This review appears in Musikexpress 3/2026.
