Tim: It’s a tale as old as time.
Tom: Beauty and the Beast?
Tim: Slightly different one – the relationship is forbidden, but the love is just too strong. Will it end in accidental mutual suicide this time? SPOILER: no, no it won’t.
Tom: Not Beauty and the Beast, then.
Tim: You know, if that last bit is the clue that makes you realise that, you really ought to rewatch the film…
Tom: GOOD NEWS: I could sort-of sing the chorus after one listen! BAD NEWS: I was singing it in a Vic Reeves Club Singer style.
Tim: What I so love about the German pop industry is that, unlike any other in the world that I’m aware of, it positively encourages throaty old men to abandon their roots and jump into dance music.
Tom: And schlager dance music as well! Where on earth is that still being seriously published?
Tim: Only in Germany. Take Bernhard – he’s been going over forty years, his debut release was a jaunty folk number, but now here he is at the age of 66 pumping out dance bangers like there’s no tomorrow and getting to number 14 in the charts with them. Accompanying him he’s got Matthias Reim, Alf, Nik P. (Austrian, but still), all of whom we’ve covered before, and so many others, and I absolutely adore that.
Tom: It is a bit of a shame about the video, because I honestly can’t tell whether that’s meant to be a father-daughter relationship or a May-September relationship and frankly that’s just a bit creepy. But yes, keeping careers alive with schlager is just lovely.
Tim: I also adore this track, because it’s everything I want it to be: a dance background that’s verging on euphoric, that vocal style that, whatever anyone outside Germany thinks, works so well, and then that key change at the end to emphasise just how strong the love is and how inseparable they are, sod the forbiddenness of it all.
Tom: Agree about the key change, still a bit creeped out by the vocals.
Tim: It’s just great: the track, and the fact that it’s encouraged to exist.