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2023 was by far the worst year for Zartmann. His music career started so promising two years earlier. After the little hype about his first single “2 Blocks”, he really wanted to get started. A new recording studio, a label and then a tour with the Dresden Rapcrew 01099. Everything seemed to run according to plan. But then the young Berliner noticed the small print. The contract, which he had put on with his friend and manager at the time, prevented him from publishing his songs. A mistake that you don’t make a second time. Until he freed himself from the gag contract, he ceased his unpublished texts – “a stack of texts under the bed”, as it says in a later single. The stack grew and grew.
The new freedom
Finally free, Zartmann finally started in 2024. In his aptly pretended “I am free” EP, everything revolved around “big city, couple drugs and how you sometimes miss”. His mix of daydreaming and nightly escapades determined the summer of the gene Z. The songs create their sociable atmosphere with warm guitar sounds and danceable percussion. And Zartmann’s voice sounds like on an empty balcony with a full ashtray. A Berlin house party rages in the background. Sometimes laughter or pouring pushes through the balcony door and mixes into the vocals. The melancholic party mood is therefore inevitable.
With “I am free”, Zartmann moved into the top 10 album charts-and in the rental free of rental in the influential German pop potify playlist “Wild hearts”. The song “How you sometimes fail” with colleague Ski Aggu and producer Dauner won the 1Live Krone for the best alternative song a little later. Zartmann cannot be stopped.
There are hardly any breaks anyway. “There is no time to really pause and be grateful. This is not so healthy for a long time,” reflects the newcomer-in conversation between hotel check-in, shower and sound check for his tour. Popstar life has two sides: sparkling wine flies on one and you can escape the winter of Berlin on the tour. Everyday things hardly find space on others and so a visit to Rewe or washing the laundry becomes big moments of calm, says Zartmann. Because right after the tour came his second EP. It is called “Schönhauser EP” and ties in where the first ended: the title “Not forever”.
Intime insights
The focus is on the question: Who do you write about your songs? Zartmann replies in a fragile voice: “The next ones are for you.” Even if it seems too late for that. Because what follows is a chronological narrative about a relationship that is doomed to fail. From the first bandel in “Tau me on” to over -the -top marriage fantasies in “Una” to the painful knowledge. Even his idol Max Raabe is on a song and advises the mourners: “Let it go”.
They are songs that can be roared at concerts, but still give enough details for intimate insights. Moments that take place around the eponymous Schönhauser Allee. So the EP ends in front of the subway station, with a tender man on the cover and “Your Dudenktschoen” in flames. He sings: “I have to save the sight quickly, but then go, I have to go on.”