Day 2 of the Xavier Naidoo comeback tour in the sold out Lanxess Arena. The singer delivers an outstanding musical performance. And when it comes to his favorite song, Naidoo even becomes political again. But wait, wasn’t there something else?
The background noise subsided significantly on day 2
It’s 9:08 p.m. and Xavier Naidoo is in trouble for a brief moment. He was just singing “Don’t Stop”, one of his early, programmatic ballads in which he staged his soulfully packaged slogans of perseverance in the form of a moral and pathetic imperative, when the audience’s singing suddenly rose so loudly that for the first, but not the last, time on this pre-Christmas December evening, he had to sing against what felt like 16,000 voices. Admittedly, this can’t really put an exceptional artist like Naidoo in distress. But he seems a little surprised for a moment.
It’s day 2 of the disgraced singer’s two-day Cologne residency, who is attempting his stage comeback in the sold-out Lanxess Arena. The two shows in Germany’s largest event hall were sold out within hours and are now the start and experimental field of a 16-concert tour, which Naidoo will take from January through Germany’s largest halls across the country. While the first concert the evening before was under keen observation and in the shadow of a debate about the legitimacy of a stage comeback for conspiracy theorists, the background noise on day 2 has subsided significantly. One more reason to take a closer look at this evening.
The focus: just the music
As a reminder: Xavier Naidoo has been away for six years now, has not played on a big stage, and how great the audience’s abstinence was becomes clear when the interior of the hall fills up. Long before Naidoo appears, the cheering in the Lanxess Arena is so loud that you get the feeling that the audience simply wants to see their singer, who was thought lost for many years, appear in front of the microphone again by applauding.
At 8:20 p.m. Naidoo is actually on stage with a six-piece band and plays a concert that is still a concert in the classic sense of the word. The son of Mannheim almost completely foregoes show elements and at least reduces them to a minimum. No, the focus this evening is solely on the music. And it’s staged so masterfully that Naidoo hasn’t managed to do it for quite a long time.
And then Naidoo becomes political again
He opens the evening with “Bei meine Seele” and then presents a set lasting more than two hours that forms a cross-section of his work, a set full of hits, with the really, really big ones appearing in the last third (“Bevor Du go”, “I don’t know anything (that’s as beautiful as you)”, “And if a song”).
About halfway through the evening, Naidoo even gets political again for a brief moment, although so far he has conspicuously refrained from making any political comments. Before he plays the “Mercenary Song”, he emphasizes that this song from 2009 is probably his current favorite song because the anti-war rhetoric in the present has a hot topic again. “We are remembering the far too many soldiers here,” he then emphasizes, remaining vague, “who are currently losing their lives.” Then he starts the song, which builds ecstatically from its initial reduction and culminates in a cutting guitar solo.
And yes, hands down, the new arrangements of the songs work just great! They reach their climax when the band plays into a great percussive frenzy during “Zzeilen aus Gold”, which builds into a technoid finale before the song unfolds one last time in all its beauty. That evening, the warm sound covers the multi-purpose hall like a warm wool blanket and completely wraps you in musical well-being. The people are happy, mission accomplished, comeback successful.
Conspiracy myths versus feelings: A reality check for Germany
But wait, wasn’t there something else? Well, there were reasons why Naidoo was gone for so long. Naidoo, who has caused a stir since the beginning of his career with abstruse theories (mainly) outside of music, seemed to lose his last inhibitions during the Corona pandemic and drifted into xenophobic, anti-Semitic and conspiracy ideological narratives in front of the general public, which he spread with increasing obsession.
Some of them were simply absurd, such as the adrenochrome theory, according to which elite power elites would hold and abuse tens of thousands of children in underground tunnel systems in order to rejuvenate themselves with their blood, or his research that the climate movement “Fridays For Future” was a satanic group that conjured up the Antichrist.
But some of them were also seriously inhumane when he spoke about refugees as “raving wolves,” accused “world Jewry” of having declared war on Germany, and called the Holocaust a “successful historical fiction.” Naidoo was deeply trapped in the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and far from his own reality.
At the beginning of his career he wrote a highly acclaimed song in memory of Alberto Adriano, who was beaten to death by neo-Nazis, but one of his last songs is now a feature with “Category C” singer Hannes Ostendorf, who in turn was convicted of an arson attack on a refugee home in 1991. In April 2022, he finally spoke out with a video statement in which he revealed that he had begun a reflection process, that he had gotten lost in his conspiracy theories and that he now regretted many of the things he had said. What exactly? Unclear. Since then: radio silence.
However, Naidoo also accompanied Germany through difficult times
A lot has rightly been written, classified and speculated about this in the last few days, but none of this is of any interest to anyone here tonight. This does not mean that the audience would share these theories or statements expressed in the past. That just means that the political failures have been forgiven, forgotten or at least suppressed for the moment.
Because, pause for a moment, please, there was something else in the balance of his life and work: more than seven million records sold, 14 top ten singles, some of them hymns, such as “This Way”, the song, no, the soundtrack to the summer fairy tale of the German Football World Cup, go to Naidoo’s account, i.e. an oeuvre that represents a not entirely insignificant part of Germany growing up, through the big one Lovesickness, accompanied through difficult times.
What’s more: probably no musician in Germany has sung as deeply from the soul for many years as this man. With his music, Naidoo touches on such basic, fundamental feelings as sadness, fear, love and hope (actually, each of his songs can be broken down into one of these basic moods) that this music has become a soundtrack for many people’s lives.
Thoroughbred artist. Thoroughbred musician. And also a full-blooded soul catcher
This also becomes particularly clear this evening, for example when Naidoo plays “Farewell”, a song about the loss of a loved one, which visibly touches and moves many in the audience. The lyrics are hard to beat in terms of banality. “And I wanted to say goodbye / I will never forgive myself for that / Man, how could you leave us / Now I should never see you again” But it is precisely in its simplification that the song functions as the broadest possible identification offer. Naidoo dances around the stage and performs the songs that mean the world to other people.
He’s not just a full-blooded artist. Not just full-blooded musicians. No, Naidoo is also a full-blooded soul catcher. And yes, this personal connection obviously weighs more heavily for many people than all the other craziness he has spread. Heart beats madness. Nostalgia romanticizes bullshit.
The success of the tour should at least prove how huge the discrepancy between public and published opinion has now become in large parts of society. Or also: How little people care anymore about how political and cultural journalists define morality or how much a singer gets lost in political conspiracy theories. You don’t want to have your songs ruined or written. This here, this evening, is the real reality check for Germany and its state of mind.
Again, hardly anyone is closer to the German sensibility than Xavier Naidoo
The fact that Naidoo is once again very close to his audience, which presents itself as a fairly colorful cross-section of society, is something he clearly demonstrates himself. During “Bevor Dugehen”, the last song of the official set, he dares to walk through the stage pit again, shaking hands and taking selfies with the fans at the barrier. Look me in the eyes one more time, baby, before you… go. But he doesn’t do it yet.
When Naidoo comes back on stage for the first of two encores, he asks the audience if they are really sure they want to hear a few more songs? After all, it would be late, and it would be the middle of the week, and they, the people in the audience, are the ones who have to get up again tomorrow morning and go to work, but hey, hey, there are still three songs left, right? Of course! And if you haven’t understood it yet, it will become clear at this moment at the latest: Once again, hardly anyone is closer to the German sensibility than Xavier Naidoo.