Oskar Haag’s pop design has an innocent beauty about it. We are approaching the phenomenon.
It’s July 25th, 2021 and the “Popfest” is coming to an end in Vienna’s time-honored Karlskirche. For Oskar Haag, on the other hand, it is a start. His fingernails are painted black, and rouge frames his eyes. He has the curls and facial features of an angel. He’s been in this world for fifteen years when he picks up an acoustic guitar and begins to sing: “Stop. Stop for a minute and check. Are you still living or do you even breathe?”
It’s the first few lines of a jewel of a pop song that echoes up to the seventy-two meter high dome. “Stargazing” is one of the few songs that is not tied to any fashion or clientele. It is universal, accessible to all people equally. The audience in the church, which is bursting at the seams, recognizes this, and honors the performance with standing ovations and open mouths. From now on, one thing is certain in the Alpine republic, ORF and FM4 shout it out: This – his very first – concert is the beginning of a great career.
The foundation for this was laid much earlier, in Haag’s parents’ house in Klagenfurt. His mother is a costume designer and his father is a singer in the band Naked Lunch. When their son is three years old, they give him a drum set, which he destroys within a few days as a result of ruthless use. At the same time, something like an early musical socialization takes hold, the Beatles, Neil Young and mountains of indie records ring out through the family apartment.
Did he see everything or nothing?
A good decade later. While the corona virus freezes the world, Haag writes his first British-style plays in his bedroom – simple but determined. He first uploads his sketches to SoundCloud, and they now appear on his debut album TEENAGE LULLABIES. Haag opted for a singer/songwriter approach and at the same time presented the big pop draft. One inevitably stumbles over the question of where this boy gets all that he is singing about. There is an unsuspecting beauty in titles like “Hold Me Tight”, “Black Dress” and “Love Me For Tonight”, they have something completely universal about them – probably precisely because they don’t necessarily draw on experience. The answer probably lies hidden here: the most important tool in art remains the imagination.
And then in 2022, seven days before Christmas, “As you like it” will premiere in Vienna’s legendary Burgtheater. Orlando and Rosalinde despair of love, Shakespeare’s comedy takes its course. At some point someone stands there with a guitar in his hands, wearing a purple frilly dress, the silk blowing in the wind. A voice sounds as if its bearer had seen everything and nothing: “Stop. Stop for a minute and check. Are you still living or do you even breathe?” Oskar Haag is still watching the stars. It seems, however, that he is slowly making his way towards them.
This text first appeared in the Musikexpress issue 04/2023. Order here.