Three observations:
1. x-tina also kissed madonna
We are at a point in history where there seems to be precedent for everything, a new nuclear strike would be likened to Hiroshima. Hardly anyone speaks or sings about Nagasaki, the city on which the second atomic bomb fell. A young Viennese post-punk band, the Leftovers, calls one of their songs “Hiroshima” and has to be compared musically to Nirvana and Dienerve.
Their lyrics are reminiscent of Isolation Berlin, and thus also of the Ton Steine Scherben. KRACH is an album that sees the leftovers intoning “Ko-ka-in” and yelling “I suck at you,” evoking memories of Falco and Tic Tac Toe without naming them. In his third book, “The Philosophy of Modern Songs,” which has just been published in German, Bob Dylan wrote about the song as a cultural technique that appropriated something that had always existed in order to continue writing it. There is nothing unique. Everything is just a duplicate of a duplicate. Always the same tune. Nothing new in the West?
2. copy past(s)
With Kim de l’Horizon, a non-binary person has won the German Book Prize for the first time. And for the first time, Kim Petras was a trans woman at the top of the American charts. In “Unholy”, Petras, who was born in Cologne, sings what she sang years ago: that she wants a sugar daddy who will buy her Balenciaga.
Balenciaga is currently the most frequently mentioned luxury brand in pop music, is pop’s symbol of prosperity. A company that recontextualizes Crocs and dirty sneakers, and most recently rubber boots and chip bags: as luxury goods. The writer Jovana Reisinger, who grew up with Hartz 4, presents herself as a pink ruffled, but at the same time contemporary luxury item.
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In her essay cycle “Enjoy Schatz” she negotiates her lust and her divorce in an autofictional way, touching on the topics of writing and gender and class. Wondering why she wants love and relationships at all, sometimes can’t focus on anything else. The copy of which old claims is this longing for love actually? Counts only the love? Is that a slogan, a show, or the truth? “Wasn’t that all real?” the leftovers sing in whispers on “Schizo”.
3. iconic
We consume other people’s PR every day on social networks. Effective PR relies on the use of nostalgic elements to emotionally activate consumers. Kim Kardashian squeezed into Marilyn Monroe’s Happy Birthday, Mr President dress, hoping to infuse herself with the icon’s insignia so that she could one day be remembered like that – without dying too soon, of course.
Durable and enduringly iconic! Like the Samba sneaker. You wear it again. But gotta buy a new one because it’s called Velosamba now, you can clip it to a bike pedal, it doesn’t look exactly like the old one. Only almost. “Unholy,” Kim Petra’s and Sam Smith’s #1 hit, sounds refreshingly different, they say. The song is not written in minor or major, but in Phrygian. Which is rare in the west, but still not new. Beyoncé’s “Naughty Girl” (2003) and “Beautiful Liar” (2006) are also written in Phrygian. The two-thousanders were so iconic.
This column first appeared in the Musikexpress issue 01/2023.