Pop and Electronic Music 2023
Nostalgia on the dancefloor

After three years of pandemic and post-pandemic restrictions, Gen Z have stormed the dancefloors in 2023 – sometimes for the first time. This new generation is developing its own rave culture, wildly mixing techniques, sounds and aesthetics from hip hop and electronic music. Thematically, escapism and nostalgia for a vaguely distant past have dominated the most diverse genres of pop cross-generationally.

By Aida Baghernejad

We can’t talk about pop music in 2023 without talking about Otto. Yes, that’s right, Otto, German comedian, film-maker and creator of the Ottifanten comic mascot. Or about 1970s rock legend Udo Lindenberg. Or Eurodance starlet Blümchen. Big names from previous decades – all of them chart-toppers this year.

How is this possible?

For many Gen Zers, in other words people born between 1997 and 2012, 2023 was their first chance to experience nightlife. After three years of Covid restrictions, war in Europe and the subsequent economic challenges, Gen Z has been able to decide for the first time what going out and club culture mean to them. And quite often, they have returned to nostalgic ideas from the 90s and noughties, from their own childhoods and also the adolescent years of their parents’ generation.

Young stars meet old stars

This may or may not explain why a young aspiring singer like German-Italian Domiziana (born in 1997) collaborated with Blümchen, aka Jasmin Wagner, (born in 1980) on the song SOS. Or why Brandenburg rapper Badmómzjay (2002) teamed up with German hip hop legend Kool Savas (1975). Or why schlager singer Helene Fischer (1984) invited Shirin David (1995) to feature on her tenth-anniversary version of Atemlos durch die Nacht, the song made famous by the 2014 World Cup.

This rather unexpected trend was probably started by Ludwigshafen-born rapper and singer Apache 207 (1997), who featured Udo Lindenberg (born in 1946) on the rap schlager Komet. Released in mid-January 2023, the song gave Lindenberg his first ever number-one hit in a career spanning over 50 years. These collaborations are not just simple throwbacks to a supposedly simpler, less complicated time. By working with musicians from past decades – or sometimes just sampling them, like rapper Pashanim on Ms. Jackson – these young pop artists are consciously or subconsciously placing themselves in the tradition of pop.

But this phenomenon of cross-generational collaboration is not just happening in rap or mainstream pop, as the band Die Benjamins shows. Set up by musicians Max Gruber, better known as Drangsal, Charlotte Brandi, Julian Knoth from Die Nerven and Thomas Götz from Beatsteaks, the project came about as a result of its members’ shared admiration for Annette Benjamin, singer of the punk band Hans-a-Plast, which was founded in 1978. Releasing their self-titled debut EP in July this year, Die Benjamins is also referred to as an indie punk supergroup and is, first and foremost, a tribute to the pioneer and champion of female-interpreted German punk.  

Escapism as a way of coping with current reality

Probably the only song as successful and seminal as the anthemic Komet this year was Friesenjung – which Otto Waalkes (for the sake of completeness, born in 1948) performed live on stage at this summer’s hip hop festival Splash in front of thousands of ecstatic teenagers with 26-year-old rave rapper Ski Aggu and his Dutch contemporary Joost. Incorporating heavily accelerated samples of Otto’s 1993 song of the same name (itself a parody of Sting’s Englishman in New York), their collaboration Friesenjung has dominated this year’s charts since its release in May 2023. Lyrically, it has little content, relying more on wordplays and stories of party excess.

Focusing on excess, all-out partying and the consumption of all kinds of substances, not just alcohol, of course, is nothing new in the pop world. But paired with high-pitched songs sampling music from the 90s and noughties, these themes suggest a need for escapism. More than anything, this need can be attributed to the massive restrictions imposed as a result of the pandemic, which defined the formative teenage years of Generation Z. Rave culture, for example, was lived out not so much in real-life clubs and parties – locked down for months at a time – as via smartphone screens in Tiktok videos, known as Ravetok. The videos explained dance moves, for example, or recommended outfits for club settings.

But this escapism manifested itself not just euphorically; there was also something quite melancholic about it. One example was the debut album Symba Supermann by rapper and actor Symba (real name Sylvain Mabe), which was released in January. References to toys such as Tamagotchis and Nerf guns, computer games like Sim City and kids’ shows such as Power Rangers, were combined with mentions of luxury brands – Tesla, Gucci and Porsche – and wistful lines like: “Mama, wir sind traurig / warum, weiß ich auch nicht” (Mum, we’re sad / I don’t know why). Stories of social mobility from block to bougie are not a theme anymore; instead, the Berlin artist concentrates on the loss of a certain childlike carefreeness reminiscent of a postmodern Marcel Proust.

A distinctly female perspective on this tension between melancholy and escapism is offered by artists like Paula Hartmann, or very powerfully by Pakistan-born Berlin rapper Wa22ermann. Their accounts of long nights and terminal boredom are like the postmodern “no future” mindset of a generation whose youth is defined by climate catastrophe, pandemic and war: “Bin seit zwei Tagen wach, es liegt an dem Konsum in der Stadt, die nicht schläft, doch es gibt nichts zu tun“ (Been awake for two days, because of consumption / in the city that doesn’t sleep, but there’s nothing to do). Just as algorithms determine content mixes on social media rather than genre categories, genre markers are evidently equally meaningless for this generation of musicians. The boundaries between electronic music like rave as well as gabber, techno, hip-hop and rap, are becoming increasingly blurred or are disappearing altogether, as artists like Ski Aggu or Wa22ermann prove in the sound worlds for their club and rave-based stories.

Cross-generational escape from everyday reality

But even music not produced by or aimed primarily at Gen Zers was dominated by escapism and nostalgia in 2023. The album Multi Faith Prayer Room from electronic-acoustic trio Brandt Brauer Frick, released in late May, celebrated the hedonism of club culture and traced the course of a night musically. They combined profoundly political themes – a long poem by performer Mykki Blanco examines climate change and sex, while the titular concept of the interfaith prayer room exemplifies the kind of peaceful space where people of different faiths and cultures can meet – with dancefloor euphoria. Crucchi Gang, launched in 2020 by Francesco Wilking (actually the singer of indie band Die Höchste Eisenbahn), took a completely different direction. Starting out as a lockdown project in which German musicians performed favourite tunes in Italian, their hugely successful debut album was followed this year by a second album with collaborators such as Tocotronic and singer-songwriter Antje Schomaker, alongside large concert evenings. The project plays with the old Federal Republic’s yearning for the Italian cliché of “la dolce vita”, as does the band project Roy Bianco & Die Abbruzzanti Boys. The Italy they dream of, of course, is not today’s Italy with its post-fascist prime minister and economic challenges, but a sun-drenched, sorbet-coloured dreamland that conjures up family holidays, chequered tablecloths and long days on Adriatic beaches. In times of political and economic turmoil, it seems tempting to dream of foreign pastures, at least for the duration of an album, or even for a single song.
The same scenario is promised by a surprising returnee to the realms of German pop: fifteen years after the release of his solo debut Stadtaffe, rapper, producer and member of the band Seeed, Peter Fox, brought out his second solo album Love Songs in 2023. Surprising, given that Fox had vowed only to work on band projects and as a producer after his first and only solo release. But with his track Toskana Fanboys, a collaboration with Italian music legend Adriano Celentano, he also taps into Germany’s love affair with Italy. Even the first single Zukunft Pink has an escapist feel to it the first time you hear it: “Hab’ Brandenburg entdeckt / Bianchi-Bikes – Future-Flex / Alles wird supergeil, basta” (I discovered Brandenburg / Bianchi bikes – Future-Flex / Everything will be super tight, basta). But listening more closely, it’s clear the artist is also addressing political issues, such as the Tax Me Now initiative, in which wealthy people like himself call for higher tax rates, and describes a vision of a fairer, more climate-friendly future. This kind of discourse, however, was overshadowed by a debate about cultural appropriation following the song’s release, because Fox and his production team The Krauts had referenced the sound aesthetics of Amapiano, South Africa’s version of house. Fox confronted the debate head-on, discussing the issue with his often young critics, most of them victims of racism themselves, and released a new version of the song in which he collaborated with Black artists. The debate demonstrated how socio-cultural disputes could take place in pop – if all sides are willing to engage in open discussion.

Unfortunately, this year’s pop was also defined by the opposite of open discussion, including calls to boycott the electronic music video streaming format Hör Berlin in connection with the Middle East conflict. After artists were banned from wearing clothes displaying pro-Palestinian symbols in a stream, users were urged to avoid the platform – despite explanations and apologies from Hör Berlin. The handling of sexual assault allegations against Rammstein frontman Till Lindemann also showed that open discussion about mistakes and transgressions is still very much a distant ideal rather than established practice in the German pop industry. We can only hope that Gen Z artists and consumers do not fall into the same traditions of the pop music business.