“Hey, hey, hey, I was the Golden Rider”, “Eisbär” and “Scandal in the restricted area”, those were the 80s – wild and colourful. Her name: the Neue Deutsche Welle. Many will now think: “The 80s are dead.” And yet a new New German Wave is just beginning to inspire and carry young people with it. In addition to Edwin Rosen and The Doomers, artists such as Drangsal, Rosmarin, diggidaniel, Traumatin and Miese Mau belong to the movement.
Today’s strikers and dränger come from Stuttgart, Hanover or Berlin and perform at sold-out concerts. The audience is excited. But what makes the movement so special? Their representatives choose concise phrases that they write in their Spotify profiles like messages to their listeners, such as: “Thematically somewhere between self-discovery and mud in the head” (Miese Mau), “Heartache from’m Wedding” (Rosmarin), “when if not never” (traumatin) and “praise of forgetting” (diggidaniel). Sound and text differ from the pre-movement. They are characterized by cool synthesizer beats, dynamic melodies and soulful, minimalist lyrics, mostly written in German.
Aimlessness, freedom, time, being in love and being alone – it’s about melancholy and nostalgia that infect the listener and let them indulge in the melodies. The new “Neue Deutsche Welle” is the product of Generation Z. The musicians use beats from the 80s and combine them with the dynamics of synth-pop. Added to this is the emotionality and displeasure of their mostly 14 to 25 year old listeners. They stand for a generation that finds the 80s more exciting than the future because the future looks so bleak.
What the audience likes about the songs is the truthfulness with which the artists release their music without promo, media hyper-presence, complex management or over-the-top videos. The Neue Neue Deutsche Welle is something of a counter-movement to the information and advertising overload that the younger generation is exposed to.