A difficult year passed. And now Linus Volkmann is rubbing salt in the wounds!
I confess, I had to look for a long time to find any fault with the power year 2024. Because as you remember, everything went fantastically. You almost felt like you were on the threshold of a utopia and everywhere you looked there was harmony sprouting from the seams. Even the hostile Beaver brothers from Oasis had no choice but a reunion. Cocaine Supernova for everyone!
What else was there? Oh yes, the cult cadaver Donald Trump won the highly prized US presidential election – and, oh boy, how much he wanted that all the time, everyone knew that! You just had to be happy with the shrill, thoroughbred statesman! In Germany, too, there is no trace of dreary political bureaucracy à la the Bonn Republic. Instead, Berlin offered an exciting show with intrigue and drama – in which you should now even be included. Keyword new elections! Keyword: participatory theater! Putin is already charging pro-AfD and pro-Wagenknecht election-influencing bots on the Lime Juicer. What a time to be alive!
But as a columnist, always highlighting merits and highlights in the present is now quickly seen as boring or “doesn’t click!” That’s why I picked a few maggots out of the Christmas stollen. But as I said: only for the quota! You know how awesome 2024 actually was.
PS: This collection covers very different topics. I was able to get to grips with some of them with irony or even a wink, but with others I couldn’t. In order to bring everything into a flow, I have the points with me funny, not so funny and bitter marked. Then at least you always know what you have to get involved with.
12 disappointments from 2024
Christian Lindner [funny]
Guys, I’m really disappointed with Christian Lindner’s behavior. Okay, fun! Although I’m just a simple cultural journalist, I’m not so mentally disconnected that I would have ever expected or even hoped for anything from the neoliberal beast. I’d even go so far as to say that if Christian Lindner defecated screaming in front of my window and then tried to strangle the neighbor’s cat… even then I would think: “This doesn’t change my image of him in any way.”
Kamala Harris [funny]
Don’t hit me, dear Trump ultras, but I would have preferred Kamala Harris’ election victory even more. The so-called “Brat Summer” – Charli XCX’s successful album and her commitment to Kamala Harris – somehow spoke to all the emancipated forces in the world. Also to me. The vision of a fairer world had something to it – and yet seemed a little more pleasant than just that Revenge as a primary presidential motivation. Well, let’s wait for wars and the end of the world in the next few years – maybe it will work for Kamala on the second attempt. Of course, your candidacy will be in front of a kind of “Mad Max” backdrop. TOI Toi Toi!
“The Acolyte” [funny]
How Disney must hate its own Star Wars franchise! The short-term successful transition to series format (“The Mandalorian”) turned into a permanent fixture that spits out ever more clumsy projects. This year it was “The Acolyte,” which was announced as a mash-up of “Frozen” and “Kill Bill.” A bearded film critic that I follow on the world wide web once said: “You’d better do something with ‘Star Wars’ again if you do ‘Star Wars’.” The planned second season of “The Acolyte” has now been canceled by the “parent company”. However, it seems increasingly questionable whether things will ever get hotter again in the Star Wars franchise. I have a bad feeling about this, guys!”
Spotify Wrapped [not so funny]
The founder of the musician sweatshop Spotify, Daniel Ek, only distributes the seeds of his income to the artists themselves. Instead, he invests some of the stolen wealth in weapons technology. After the last Spotify Wrapped (i.e. December 2023), Ek laid off almost a quarter of the workforce. So the summary of their own musical tastes, which the group recently served up again as “Wrapped”, tasted more like ashes and data theft than before.
Wrapped everywhere [funny]
That all the collected data is not just sold to the user, but also for fun can also be played back again, has long since taken on a (sometimes strange) shape beyond Spotify’s Wrapped. While the language app Duolingo is at least making fun of it so that the unholy owl becomes even scarier, crass and more viral, smaller apps also seem to want to not miss the trend. The well-known pop journalist and Sportfreunde-Stiller opponent Gerrit Pohl beautifully highlighted the unintentional humor of the matter in a posting…
Gigi d’Agostino [bitter]
A pop song becomes a cipher for purebred Xenophobia. Of course, this particularly hurts me as a music journalist, but it has especially hurt and unsettled many migrant people this year. open end. Anyone who uses “L’amour toujours” for these purposes deserves instant tinnitus – and something like hellfire or gulag, depending on what you believe. No punch line.
Never forget [bitter]
2024 was also the first year after the seventh of October twenty-three. So from the Hamas attack on civilians to the slaughter of visitors to a music festival. A direct consequence of this is the unleashing of global anti-Semitism, the manifestation of which has repeatedly shocked people this year. Burning synagogues, hatred at the ESC against the Israeli singer Eden Golan or simply people being chased through the streets of Amsterdam because they are Jews. This development can no longer be managed with cheap Instagram tiles, that much is clear. Nevertheless, it leaves an uneasy feeling when even established bands like Toten Hosen simply withdraw from the topic instead. In the years before the Hamas attack, they had the cheap “Never Forget” tile commemorating the pogroms of November 9, 1938 collecting likes for their account. In 2024, on the same date, there will only be advertising for a re-release. Without wanting to doubt the band’s attitude… unfortunately for me that fits into an article about the disappointments of the year.
Stefan Raab [funny]
Competitive TV legend Stefan Raab has returned to the screen as his own prime-time zombie. It had something of a long-lost (and rather unpleasant school friend) about whose reappearance you politely rejoice for a few minutes – and then pulls into your garage farting loudly.
But the church, Olaf Scholz and Woke-Twitter were obviously asleep – and so the trained butcher (“Wadehaddedudeda”) was able to settle in the garage (read: RTL’s unaired program schedule). His “new” show has become chronic and is no longer easy to get rid of.
More about this here…
Farin vacation [bitter]
The Doctors not only represent a complete musical work in punk, but also an attitude of integrity. Both are undeniable. It was all the more difficult this year when Farin Urlaub appeared on the Christmas album by Christian Lorenz, alias Flake. In the wake of the events surrounding Rammstein, he not only came under criticism as a supporter of the system, the story of a person in whom Flake himself is said to have allegedly committed an attack in the early noughties also became public. Farin’s current involvement with Flake dismayed and frustrated many fans. Did he want to demonstrate that he didn’t care about the issue and back up his long-term buddy? In the shitstorm, Farin spoke up himself (in the guestbook on the homepage), appeared surprised and affected and rejected all implications of men’s associations. At least not an intention. However, one would have wished for a little more. Maybe something else will come…
Elon Musk [funny]
Don’t get me wrong: I love horror clowns! But I still offer the following long-term bets without any value (“Long term bets” – I know them from “How I Met Your Mother”):
==> I bet Elon music won’t die a natural death.
Disclaimer: I don’t want anything to happen to him. I wish him and everyone else a long and healthy life. Nevertheless, I get the impression that this entrepreneur of terror didn’t just set fire to the penis of both of them (11 children from 12 different women). Can this really work well over a longer distance? I don’t believe. Tap along!
Schorsch Cameroon [not so funny]
Dear young readers, do you even know this man with the fun punk name? Probably not. Well… he used to be very important with his band Die Goldenen Lemons and we still paid in German marks. We also wanted to go to Cameroon with Schorsch the government fall. Today, however, this overthrow of the government jieper has to be shared with lateral thinkers, Putin vassals and other rubbish. But today’s cadre-stupid boomer left can – like so many things – ignore this as a secondary contradiction. Everything will be right if NATO is finally stopped – as it said on the first leaflet in the 1970s, which people remember with a pleasant shiver even in old age. If I already had serious doubts about the brilliance of the well-respected punk man after the underperforming pseudo-biography “Youth is the most beautiful time of life” from 2016, Cameroon has really become a complete stranger to me with his “anti-war song” from 2024, which is similar to Wagenknecht . Luckily no one heard the thing. I still have to link it out of chronicler duty. Herenothing to thank, “Schorsch”!
“Never Forget” [funny aber bitter]
I ask you: The comeback of the year is not really the fault of the bickering Gallagher brothers, but is clearly on the map of one of the most entertaining podcasts in the free world. I myself, your friendly narrator, have not yet worked permanently for the editorial team of the Musikexpress when two men there were already running the most entertaining and clever retro talk show. We’re talking about Fabian Soethof, Stephan Rehm-Rozanes and their “Never Forget” podcast about the nineties. After more than four years, a pandemic and other major upheavals in the world, the two Dilfs have decided to resume their pop education work. So far, so fantastic. However, the project has not yet been able to establish itself “on the market” again. Of course, the quality of content cannot be judged by the quantity of clicks – but I still don’t want to have to wait half a decade for the third season of “Never Forget”. So do me a favor, discover this show and make it the hit it already is. I’m telling you in good spirits!
What happened so far? Here is an overview of all the pop column texts.
