Euro Vision Song Contest
Malik Harris on his childhood and a strange feeling
Malik Harris will represent Germany with his song “Rockstars” at the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Turin. Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
At just 24 years old, Malik Harris is already wistfully thinking back to his childhood. In his song “Rockstars” he sings about it. One thing made the German ESC candidates thoughtful at the time.
Malik Harris needs strong nerves on May 14th. Because on that day he will be on stage in the evening, in front of millions of television viewers all over Europe.
The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is taking place for the 66th time in Turin, Italy. And Harris sings his song “Rockstars” for Germany. How is he doing before that? “I always get really excited a few seconds before I go on stage. Until then, I’m still very relaxed and looking forward to it,” says the 24-year-old, who lives in the town of Landsberg am Lech, southwest of Munich.
Landsberg of all places – where other musicians are drawn to Cologne, Hamburg or Berlin. “You can also make it from Munich,” Harris is convinced. “I have a lot of family and friends here, in Landsberg but also in Munich.” And the recording studio, where he records his songs, is also a place of well-being for him, where he likes to sleep on the sofa at night.
Little rock stars in childhood
Good times, ideal world, nostalgia, that’s what his ESC contribution has to do with it. Not with real rock stars. The 24-year-old reflects on how quickly time flies and how he wishes he could return to this dream world. “It’s about childhood and adolescence, when we were all little rock stars who didn’t think about anything, who went through life very carefree and carefree,” he explains. “Last year I realized that you’ve lost that lightheartedness of youth a bit and that we all do that when we get older.”
The 24-year-old can only rave about his childhood in the village of Issing near Landsberg, which was “super, super beautiful”: “I rode my bike around, climbed trees with friends, we had water fights, jumped in lakes ».
But some things irritated him, and that had to do with the fact that, like his father, ex-talk show host Ricky Harris, he is black. “What always gave me a strange feeling when I was a kid was the game ‘Who’s afraid of the black man?'” says the singer. His family is full of black men. “I thought, funny, my dad is a black man, are they running away from him now?” He felt left out. “Later I realized that this is a typical example of how it’s integrated in this society and you don’t give it much thought. But for people who are affected, it’s really hard.”
Then came the video from the USA in 2020, in which a police officer knelt for minutes on the neck of the African American George Floyd, who then couldn’t get enough air and died. A shock. “At the same time, like many in my family, I was a bit deaf,” says Harris. He grew up with this type of videos. In addition, it is always the same after such events: A brief outcry, “and slowly everything subsides and nobody talks about it anymore.” Only in Munich at a demonstration did he have the feeling of being part of a movement. “It triggered a lot for me to be in such a crowd of people in Munich who were all screaming “Black Lives Matter”.
“I feel extremely honored”
Harris released the song “Faith” and the documentary “Time For Wonder”, also because it is important to him to position himself on topics such as “Black Lives Matter”. “I have the feeling that we are now living in a time where we have to and can change things because there is a lot more awareness.”
So now the ESC. “I feel extremely honored that I was selected there.” The fact that German singers have mostly landed in the lower places in recent years does not bother him. “Now I can say that Germany was always bad and you can almost only be better.” In addition, he sees the whole thing less as a competition and more as “a nice get-together”, even if he naturally wants to do his best.
A victory for the Kalush Orchestra from Ukraine with the song “Stefania” out of solidarity would be okay for Harris. But the band didn’t need that. “I heard the song from Ukraine and it’s really stable, regardless of everything, it could win.” The 24-year-old still wants to do his best. And no matter how it ends for him, he definitely wants to celebrate and enjoy himself in Turin: “In any case, it will be a short night”.