Why Naïka is reminiscent of Fettes Brot, how Robyn sings about love as resistance & what “Heated Rivalry” can do.
As we all know, being on Instagram is pointless – but every year you get a video that interests you.
This song by Naïka, for example, is where I got it from.
The song is a banger, and the message anyway: While all the misery that is happening right now is happening, “the world” just carries on as if it was nothing. I always don’t really know whether this often rampant narrative is true, whether most people really just carry on like that. I see a lot of sadness, a lot of struggles, a lot of smoking heads thinking about how things could be better – and anyway, far too much consternation. But I can still understand this feeling of powerlessness, the impression of brutalization and ignorance. Exploitation is becoming more and more brutal, but more and more colorful; Capitalism is getting better and better at “sugarcoating” the misery it produces. And the patriarchy is waging a blatant war on women, children and life.
Naïka’s song reminds me of a super hit that is over 20 years old – you probably all know it by heart, it was blasted into many of us’s children’s or teenager’s rooms every day via VIVA.
Even the title is similar: on days like these, what a day. For at least two decades there has been this feeling of: There is a numb us and an affected them. At Fettes Brot the imaginary tanks drive into the peaceful idyll, into normal, orderly life. Naïka, who is of Haitian origin, knows political violence not just from screens – it is part of her family narrative.
In general, we have long since arrived in a more global world in which misery is now “better” distributed. The “stones in the stomach” that Fettes Brot are still singing about in 2005 – evidence of the noughties story that many people were doing so well and everyone had access to overconsumption – seem almost cynical today, as people in this country are also starving. One thinks of “Heal the World”, “Feed the World” and generally the “children in Africa” that US stars always wanted to help. This is hardly conceivable today, when people are dying on their own streets and many have no choice but to drug themselves with fentanyl.
Many people in the West no longer only notice the extent of wars because they go to the bakery and the newspaper is there, but because they stare at their cell phones in the morning, which are connected to the whole world, because the pigs elsewhere in the world directly influence the pigs here – who are also willing to scale back every social policy in favor of even more national competition – and because, oh yes: keyword fuel prices.
Of course, the isolated amusement park idyll that Fettes Brot sang about never really existed, and only a small number of people could play it for each other (there were radio and books even back then, boys…). “On days like these” was still a good song – exactly for the world for which it was written: for VIVA. And it was also good that Naïka’s song caught me where it’s supposed to catch you: scrolling through some shit on Instagram.
So what to do? Love, some say.
Robyn, for example – for pop fans, she’s the boss of the service. While some people (men) harden, partly because it is required of them, women become softer. Some against each other and against us, others for each other. Many say and some sing about it.
“If you’re scared, say you’re scared” and: “I used to have thicker skin, but I chose to let you in”.
Or Daniel Schreiber, boss of soft essays. He writes about love, and for a moment you think: aha, yes, again? Until you realize that it actually seems out of time because something happened that we should never have allowed. Namely the contempt for love, the “outdated” feeling of love, the fact that the word only comes across as ideologically charged and instrumentalized.
“Love! A Call” is personal and historical and political and important because we simply cannot leave it alone. Because behind love there is solidarity – and only that can save us.
And now something briefly about “Heated Rivalry”
To call it hype is an absolute understatement – there has rarely been more under-the-radar. If you haven’t seen it yet: It’s about two hockey players, how they desire each other and the problems that that brings with it. A bit of Romeo & Juliet, but with a different ending. I’m not the biggest fan because I’m very bored with these smooth, slim, young bodies and their porn-inspired tendencies. Every now and then it’s a bit like staring at the screen saver on the hotel television and dissociating. But the good actors always pull it out. They ARE the series – that’s for sure.
Even though many people praise the sex scenes, I have the feeling that the enthusiasm about them only shows how much sexuality is messed up. The fact that many people already perceive this as particularly beautiful irritates me. I see tense faces, I hear someone telling the other to kneel down, I notice that people are asking whether something is okay, but in the end, of course, they are expecting a yes. It’s sometimes tender, it’s also sometimes playful – but it’s always woven into what we’ve learned, what we’ve seen, what we’ve seen and fought about. BUT: The two of them keep bustling out there, and I suspect that’s what a lot of people like. Because at some point there will be real intimacy, finally TIME, finally real space for each other. Maybe that’s what people long for, maybe that’s what you strive for after a decade of being completely destroyed by dating apps and social media. Maybe something will happen. Maybe we can all get together again. We suckers.
What happened so far? Here is an overview of all the pop column texts.
