Has Paula Carolina been listening to a lot of Morricone lately? Or rather The Doctors? Probably both: WILD begins with choirs that walk between church chairs and spaghetti westerns – until the singer spits out a flippant “Hello, people” and takes off straight into a children’s song-like utopia with “a groovy beat” and happiness for everyone. The Mannheim native’s second studio album is nowhere near as flashy as her debut EXTRA from 2024, but not only the pre-release single “Gim me your money!” critical of capitalism! has unmistakable Farin holiday qualities.
With his slightly twisted, always mischievous humor, Carolina also tackles topics such as copyright law or shopping at the hardware store, everything used to be better nonsense, embarrassing nicknames, the crisis of democracy or simply “sex and love”: “We have sex, we make love, that goes really deep.” Musically, it sometimes sounds like it’s extra broad or ideal, but the joke develops an astonishing range and doesn’t shy away from falling into the meta level. “A song in which nothing happens” is a song that is actually about nothing – and therefore actually about the bigger picture.
With the wonderfully nihilistic “I was here,” Paula Carolina proves that she doesn’t have to be funny, but can also be tragic. Above all, WILD is a commentary on the present time, which manages to wrest at least a bit of gallows humor from the desperate world situation using the musical and lyrical means of the Neue Deutsche Welle.
