on music in Germany

Tracy suggested that I write a post about German music, which, like so many things in life, I’ve actually been meaning to do forever, but have never gotten around to. This was in part because I was afraid that it would just end up being a disorganized collection of thoughts and YouTube videos. I was completely correct. Feel free, but by no means compelled, to read on anyway.

When I first got to Germany, one of the first things I noticed was the music. It wasn’t the huge differences between music here and music at home…no, on the contrary, it was the amount of music that was American, or at least in English. (Even a lot of German bands write songs in English in hopes of appealing to a wider audience.)

In September, we were in this lovely historic village called Bad Münstereifel, and I was quite amused to hear “Ring of Fire” playing incongruously in one little café and “I’ve Gotta Feeling” in a fairly upscale boutique. It quickly grew unwieldy to point it out when songs I knew came on the radio, though I still feel the need to identify certain artists, like Peter Gabriel (thanks, Dad!). Speaking of whom, at one point during the fall, I heard some song that my dad likes — not sure which, sorry — several times in the same day and I got somewhat homesick. D’aw.

So, when I went to my first party in October, I was completely expecting to hear all the same music from prom/band banquet/those other rare occasions in which I’ve been exposed to music that normal people dance to.

Happily, I was wrong, and there were lots of German songs that everyone except me could sing along to. A lot of them turn out to have been Karneval songs…for example, das Fliegerlied! I am a big fan of this one, because it was incredibly easy to get the hang of.

On that particular evening, Germany was playing Turkey, and to make up for the fact that we were all stuck there at the party and couldn’t watch the match, the DJ made an announcement every time Germany scored. Happily, we won 3-0, and everyone was in a very positive Füßball-mood, and got very, very into singing this Kölsch number:

I also got to sing some great Karneval Lieder in Düren on 11/11, including this one, which is not too hard to catch onto, either:

There are certainly German artists who sing German songs that are not associated with Karneval, but to be honest, I don’t know much of this music. (If any of my German friends read this, please introduce me to some more!)

However, in the Diskos they still tend to play a lot of American music. It’s embarrassing when my German friends know the songs better than I do. I’ve learned a lot more of them, which I must say I never really expected to happen while on exchange in another country.

And, of course, German Christmas music! I would estimate that the song I’ve heard more than any other is…drumroll, please…”Last Christmas!” Wait, that’s not German. Sadly, neither is most of the other Christmas music played in Germany. As you probably know, “Silent Night” was originally the Austrian “Stille Nacht,” but I do not believe that I have heard it even once! Go figure. (I really can’t stand “Last Christmas” anymore, if I ever could. There was recently some sort of Christmas comedy special on television and they used that as the theme and it seriously may be the most overplayed song in Germany. Actually, there are several songs that I hear inordinately often on television. The first one that comes to mind is “Wonderful Life” by Hurts. I hear it all. the. time.)

But, yesterday in philosophy, we sang Christmas carols, which was unexpected and fun. Here are some of the German ones:

There are some cool and musical people here, though! I’m just starting to uncover the “music scene” at my school, which is a little less apparent than it is at KHS, so I’ll have to fill you all in about that later.

If you do not play a single other video in this entire post, I implore you to at least watch the beginning of this one. This currently the number one musical, er, phenomenon in my grade.

Yeah, I’m getting moneyyyy- ahem.

Anyway. In my humble opinion, Germans should listen to more German music and stop singing in English all the time. At least Money Boy has that going for him.

I’m kind of dreading posting this, because I will probably get loads of flak for the music I did and didn’t include (and questions about the meaning of the word flak ;D…hint: it doesn’t mean “anti-aircraft fire” in this context), but I’m going to be brave and do it anyway! Enjoy!