Pop & Politics | "Fridays for Future has no soundtrack for its revolution"

The idea that music, as the epitome of the aesthetic, should be largely kept out of the political sphere is still widespread. Your book points in the opposite direction?

Yes, it was important to me to use German-language pop music to demonstrate how closely pop and politics are connected. This is already reflected in the formative phase of modern pop music in the early 1950s in what was then a deeply racist USA, where one can observe a blackening of white music – that is, the adaptation of black musical traditions by a white mainstream music market. That was the starting point, and in the decades that followed, it has repeatedly shown how important the voice of pop music is in the context of politics.

Is there such a thing as apolitical music?

Some people would answer that question in the affirmative. I, on the other hand, believe that there are no apolitical people, no apolitical life, and therefore no apolitical music. Because music is always an expression of how I articulate and position myself within a social world. When one consciously looks away in a world of political crisis, that is a political act. And when I sing love songs that reproduce traditionally heteronormative images, that is also political.

What makes political songs interesting to you? Do their stances necessarily reflect your personal political views?

No. In my book, I analyzed 260 songs. And if they only reflected my political views, it would be a bit boring. I was interested in a form of historiography, so music is exciting to me when it reveals something substantial about the time it was created. In my opinion, this is especially successful when it is pointed and takes a stance. It generally doesn't offer a detailed, detailed analysis.

Although there are exceptions…

Yes, for example, in the song "Die Bürger von Rostock, Mannheim etc." by the Goldenen Zitronen from 1994, which attempts to reflect the events surrounding the racist riots in Rostock-Lichtenhagen and Mannheim in a very subtle, dialectical way. More typical of pop music, however, is a song like "Keine Macht für Niemand," which over time has become a catchphrase that sticks in people's minds. In the tradition of German-language pop music from Germany, the general political overshadows the concrete political, that is, the detailed case analysis of specific historical events. This is a factor that makes pop music truly powerful: the reduction of complexity and the resulting immediate connectivity and the challenge of opinion formation.

But the political charge of a song doesn't necessarily have to be inherent from the start, does it? In the book, you cite the song "Looking for Freedom" by David Hasselhoff as an example.

Yes, you can always instrumentalize songs and thus retrospectively give them a meaning that isn't inherent in the song itself. Hasselhoff styled himself as a leading cultural figure of the reunification era.

Another often-cited example is the song “Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen, which was played at Donald Trump’s campaign events, even though its content is directed against US imperialism.

Exactly, that's a frequently observed phenomenon: right-wingers appropriating popular left-wing content and exploiting it. This has become a classic strategy of neo-fascism: pursuing right-wing extremist politics with left-wing, guerrilla-like revolutionary chic. On the other hand, there have long been blinkers for understandable reasons. A very current counterexample is the group Kommando Internet, which recently hijacked Ballermann hits from the left with their album "Malle Antifa." Very successful, in my opinion.

Why is it so easy to turn the content of songs into their obvious opposite?

For the book, I had a conversation with Ingo Knollmann of the Donots, who said that when writing political songs, one has to be careful that they can't be hijacked by political opponents. A line like "No one is illegal," for example, would never be appropriated by right-wing extremists.

But doesn't this also affect the quality of art, whose strength often lies precisely in deliberately keeping levels of meaning open – and thus encouraging listeners to think?

That's the dilemma we find ourselves in. I think pop music would be completely boring without any kind of backdrop of ambivalence. But at the same time, it's a question of musical socialization as to how pop and politics are ideally brought together: whether with a sledgehammer or with the most open space of meaning possible. Aesthetically, I can appreciate something in both.

Compared to the US or Great Britain, Germany has long been more reluctant to express clear political messages in pop music. Do you share this impression?

Absolutely. In the book, I cite the song "Wölfe mitten im Mai" (Wolves in the Middle of May) by Franz-Josef Degenhardt from 1965 as a musical turning point, as it was one of the first German-language songs to address the long-term consequences of the Shoah in the midst of the repression-ridden republic of West Germany. And this at a time when the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany) had just been founded and had achieved its first electoral successes. Schlager music was the soundtrack of repression in the economic miracle of West Germany.

What was the situation like in the GDR in this regard?

Similar. There, too, the shallow Schlager (pop music) was initially the central medium of popular entertainment music. And, similarly to West Germany, this prevailing mood shifted with the rise of songwriters like Wolf Biermann, who confronted society with critical, sometimes unpleasant questions. The difference was: in the GDR, it was riskier to express political criticism. There, you faced a performance ban or even jail; in West Germany, you faced a smear campaign by the "Bild" newspaper.

Looking at the current discussion of political issues in pop, it's striking that a media-virulent and highly important topic like climate change hardly plays a role—in contrast to questions of identity politics. Why is this?

I agree with this impression. If you compare the Fridays for Future movement, it's striking that – unlike, say, the '68 movement – it doesn't have a soundtrack for its revolution. I believe that pop music no longer plays the same role in the lives of climate-conscious youth as it did for previous generations. While it's enjoyed, it's no longer the same tool for political articulation, at least not in Germany. While there was environmental music in the 1980s, most of it was delivered in an unsavory manner, with a raised, pedagogical finger, as in the well-known piece "Karl der Käfer" by Gänsehaut from 1983. But that has nothing to do with the essence of pop music.

For many years now, a growing shift to the right has been observable both nationally and internationally. To what extent is this reflected in pop music?

Fundamentally, it can be said that explicitly right-wing music has historically contributed nothing substantial to the aesthetic development of pop music in Germany. Everything that ideologically defines right-wing pop music was already present in the Nazi hits of the 1930s: "Come to us, be there, sing the flag song," "Fight, victory, death to political opponents," and so on. It is all the more remarkable that right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi music is currently experiencing an unexpected renaissance among young people online, for example among the so-called "Ostmullen" (East Mullen). TikTok, too, has been witnessing the rise of a right-wing lifestyle resistance that uses clichéd anti-establishment slogans for some time. The shift to the right in Germany, especially among the younger generation, has now reached dimensions that are rightly placed in a tradition with the baseball bat years of the 1990s. And I believe that music can further intensify this growing aggression and anger with its inherent evocative potential.

Marcus S. Kleiner: No Power for Anyone. Pop and Politics in Germany. Reclam, 440 pp., hardcover, €34.