Schlager

How did I make it this long without writing about Schlager, the hot hot music everyone's listening to these days years decades? I don't know much about pop music in Germany, let alone in the U.S., but Schlager has a certain, oh, je ne sais quoi that you can't avoid. It's sort of what happens to Muzak when you add lyrics and synthesized drums.

Today, en route to practicing Cesar Franck's expansive Grande Piece Symphonique and Mendelssohn's majestic sixth organ sonata on the robust Rieger organ in Landwasser (where one doesn't yet need mittens), I tried turning on the car radio and actually got some reception. Thus I heard most of Edith Prock's 2004 hit, "Fliege mit mir nach Samoa (Samoa, Somoa)" (Fly with me to Samoa ["Samoa, Samoa," echo the backup singers]), with a catchy synth beat and steel drums for that extra Polynesian flair; as well as a good bit of Michael Morgan's 2002 classic, "Piano, Piano" (which I think is supposed to mean "softly, softly," as in the Italian dynamic indication, rather than "Klavier, Klavier," but maybe he's in love with his keyboard, probably a white lacquered parlor grand, or someone named Piano):

"Piano, piano – du bist wirklich alles, / wonach ich mich seh’n. / Ich will dich ganz haben / und morgens nicht sagen: /Du, es war schön und dann geh’n. Piano, piano – bin einmal zu oft schon
verloren erwacht. / Und ich brauch’s nicht schon wieder, / dass‘ mich die Liebe / so hilflos macht. / Ich bin kein Typ für ’ne Nacht."

[Piano, piano--you are really all I desire. I want to have you entirely, and in the mornings not say "Yo, it was nice" and then go. Piano, piano--I've woken up left one time to many. And I don't need love to make me so helpless again. I'm not the type for a one night stand.]

Check out the music video to see and hear him in action! I doubt Franck or Mendelssohn were as dreamy in peach.