Irreverent maybe, but last night I dreamed that Taylor Swift died. In the dream I found it totally terrible, especially the timing, since their new album MIDNIGHTS has just come out. Anyway, in the dream, I thought about what song to post to commemorate her, as everyone had done in my dream. But I couldn’t think of a song anymore and I couldn’t get it right the whole day, so the whole dream day.
Taylor Swift is not dead
Luckily Taylor Swift didn’t die and I can keep thinking about her songs. What I think my dream wanted to tell me: I haven’t really “warmed up” with the new album yet. Some songs sound like an AI made Taylor Swift songs. A bit of insecurity, a bit of cringe, a bit of genius, a bit of folk, a bit of synth, old, new, off to the mixer. And with all this, of course, always the pathetic lines of text to copy, the now probably too long calculated sentences, the pointed aphorisms. “Anti-Hero”, the overly constructed hit, I don’t fall for. Hundreds of times, in three weeks at the latest, I’ll find everything totally awesome again anyway and then I’ll still take part.
Peter Fox and Amapiano
The new song by Peter Fox, “Zukunft Pink” (feat. Inéz) is all the more “penetrating”. Well, I wasn’t waiting for this. Seeed and Peter Fox, I personally always found that rather unpleasant. Among them were those wide-legged fans who tried rhythm but had never seen it, it was those youngsters who always said they’d seen the whole world and then realized that the real deal was Berlin. Mega conform, but totally “crazy”, young at heart, annoying, Joko and Klaas as music. “Zukunft Pink” is great because Peter Fox didn’t get the memo and doesn’t complain about the end of the world, but moves forward and so does the song, whose catchy tune you can’t resist.
Criticism followed immediately, after all, Peter Fox is a cultural appropriation king. The journalist Malcolm Ohanwe, among others, accused him of using the South African Amapiano and not disclosing it clearly enough.
Peter Fox has now come out and said he did pay tribute to the genre’s founders at various points, and on top of that a public talk between Ohanwe and Fox is set to take place soon. Because of course the debate about selling out subculture has to go on forever, especially since there’s a long history of white artists tapping into black culture.
If anyone has tasted blood, there is a short documentary about Amapiano from the BBC:
The Playlist on Netflix
Speaking of sales. The series “The Playlist” (Netflix) deals with the question of whether music streaming providers are more likely to benefit or harm artists. It illuminates the (fictionalized) story of Daniel Ek, who had the idea for Spotify in his early 20s. In six episodes you can see six different perspectives on this story, including from a programmer’s point of view and from an artist’s point of view. The advantage is that it doesn’t turn into a hero or asshole story, as is so often the case with these great founding stories, but that it’s really up to the viewers to evaluate where they stand and how they evaluate something. Copyrights, innovations, art as work, questions of value – it remains complicated. The disadvantage is that if you want to tell a different perspective in each episode, the dialogues often end up sounding like phrases and slogans, because of course each character always has to represent something. That makes it a bit tough at the end and a few more episodes would have been nice. I would have liked a fan episode, for example.
Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” in the 2022 version
Long before Spotify’s triumph, an album was released that has just turned 20 years old. My absolute favorite Christina Aguilera album, STRIPPED, I’ve mentioned it maybe one, two, eighteen times. And shock severity, Xtina has really thrown into the old clothes again:
STRIPPED really is full of hits. You know Fighter, you know Can’t Hold Us Down, you know Dirrty, you know The Voice Within. And you know “Beautiful”. You have feelings about it, I know it. And you remember the video that celebrated physical diversity. And you know what? Yes, it has been updated. Can you believe that? “Beautiful” in 2022 puts the finger on the Instagram wound that gapes deeply, especially among teenagers, and determines their lives far too much. It’s hilarious, but it’s also beautiful. Just like in 2002.
Incidentally, I was also at my first concert for Christina Aguilera’s “Stripped” tour. I will never forget how my buddy Bert (name changed) and I used to wander around Dresden for weeks and steal all kinds of Christina posters (there were different ones and if we got one in better condition, the old one disappeared from the respective one room) and finally managed to get hold of cheap tickets on Ebay. We drew our own fan shirts and then were so overwhelmed by the big hall that we stood at the very back but could run around pumped up the whole time, so that was just right.
Speaking of live music. Concerts are just the best, right? You can also support all the artists whose music you previously streamed on Spotify for almost free. Please go if you can. With a mask, distance, tested if possible. If not, no stress! But I don’t think anything has given me as much in the last few months as the great concerts I’ve been to. The people at “ZDF Magazin Royale” seem to feel the same way, so they produced last week a concert show that was just bomb-proof, just too short. Under the motto “There’s A Party” there were performances by Nina Chuba, Blond, addeN, Wanda, Xatar, Samy and DJ Bobo, all supported by the Ehrenfeld Radio Dance Orchestra, of course.
What happened until now? Here is an overview of all pop column texts.
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