One wants to evoke the spirit of South Africa. That’s what the original eleven-piece TV band stands for Grosch’s Eleven on stage as well as a leather sofa landscape based on the original, original recordings of palm trees in the lodge light beam you back to the Grootbos Private Nature Reserve, where the seventh season of “Sing mein Song” was filmed in March 2020. And yet, the difference is striking: This time not 1.5 (Michael Patrick Kelly episode) to 2.4 million (Nico Santos) watch, but about 9000. Max Giesinger (2.2 million) is much more impressed by the Munich Olympic Hall : “Otherwise Elton John plays here, but with seven of us we can fill the place!”
Such a sentence would have caused a stink in other TV reality formats such as “Celebrities under Palm Trees” for a long time, since Santos and Kelly already filled this room alone in 2022. But at the “exchange concert” no one claims individual success; through the all-connecting love of music, a real family grew out of a “blind date in South Africa”, with lots of laughter and puddles of tears as proof of the authenticity of such emotional outbursts. “Nothing was scripted,” swears the rapper Motrip, who can be seen feeding his musician friends stinky Harz cheese in one of three video reviews.
The concept isn’t shady, that’s why fans love it. But can this spontaneous spirit be lured again at a live exchange concert, and that after a two-year foreign phase caused by Corona? The very first concert of the tour shows: the conversations initiated by host Kelly on the couch are a bit stiff between visiting relatives and class reunions; Hearing her songs sung by others for the first time, Lea replies, was “abnormal”. But when they sing, everyone opens again. Great moments cannot be repeated often enough, for example when Motrip Giesinger’s love frenzy raps “80 million” to his confession of a Lebanese refugee, grateful to be one of these 80 million.
Since Jan Plewka celebrates his old Blessed-Song “Is it important” in Ilse DeLange’s powerful soul version like a derby victory on your knees; he himself – theatrical grunge veteran and voodoo rock master with the liveliest voice of them all – leads a polonaise to Nico Santos’ “Better.” And Santos doesn’t have to cry this time with Lea’s interpretation of “Walk In My Shoes”, tears are constantly flowing in German Justin Timberlake shortly afterwards when he himself rededicates Motrip’s thank you song “Mama” to his mother and father. They comfort each other, hug each other, there has never been as much hugging in the Olympic Hall as on this evening, an average of four hugs for each of the approximately 30 songs. That’s the magic of real, personal songs by songwriters like them, says DeLange: “That’s why it hurts, that’s why it heals.”