Recommendations of the Editorial team
We are in a kind of intermediate state. Not everything is lost yet, but the abyss can already be seen. The Bundestag election is imminent when I write this column and the prospects of getting a likeable chancellor are below zero. This is nothing new, and yet it would have been so nice if someone had become the figurehead of Germany, to whom you decrease that he really wants the best for country and its people, even for the entire planet. So if Friedrich Merz will soon be at the head of German politics and spread fear and terror, then we can comfort ourselves with the fact that at least some of the most successful German pop stars still appear likeable even after decades. No, not Rammstein! Now don’t the dead trousers, although it is right with them. It’s about the fantastic four.
“The world is bad, now real”
For their 35th anniversary, there was recently a documentary and a podcast. I regularly discover the fantasy anyway because I often look for an amusing and real rage song on my iPhone when everything annoys: “You me too” (from “Fornika”, 2007). Then Smudo roars at the beginning: “You can believe, love or hope/ At some point every ass is open/ you were right, the world is bad, the world is bad, the world is bad, the world is bad/ now real.”
The band does not protect itself in the song either, asks about the meaning of eternal continued and fear of reality: “Why am I only turning to what the fear takes me?/ Why am I exactly what I try to be?/ Why is the greatest fear that you are alone?” Most of our age were brought up by traumatized war children, that could be one of the reasons. Like a mantra, repeat the desire “We don’t become like our old ones” – to find out in the end that it may be so. Now I don’t know the parents of Smudo, Thomas D, Michi Beck and and. For example, the sons dared to do something that in Stuttgart at the time was definitely not after a great career: German -speaking rap.
You can find it stupid that the fantastic four have always been clever business people and today advertise Bosch, among other things. They never promised us that money is not important to them. You have never stated to be something you are not. You are “from the German Mittelstand”.
The fantastic four work like school friends
Even when I met Smudo for the first time, I felt like I sat down next to an old school friend – not just because of the southern German accent. They radiate a friendly reliability, they are hardworking, and even Thomas D has both feet firmly on the floor with all the dreaming. The Fantasy Perhaps the (west) German of all German bands-and that at the same time lack of aggression. Even “you me” no negative attitude, it only rages against the standstill: “It is not where you come from/ it is where you go!” The “masculine energy”, which is in demand again in the USA, is neglected, even though they are so normal heterotypes. They still have a lot of creative energy left. It would be nice if more people took a role model.