29-year-old singer, dancer and actress Larissa de Macedo Machado aka anitta has been a mainstream pop superstar in her home country of Brazil for many years. With “Vai Malandra” (2017) and “Bola Rebola” (2019) she has also managed to release two spectacular singles, which not only caused a stir outside of Brazil but also among pop hipsters, as grandiosely stumbling beat mountains beyond the usual Mainstream pop borders – and because Anitta in the rather explicit video for “Vai Malandra” also unusually explicitly – in a close-up – showed the orange skin on her butt. With the new album “Versions Of Me” (Warner), the leap to international pop superstar should finally succeed. That could work, big Latin-Pop-Crossover-Pop-Theater including American superstar guests like Saweetie or Cardi B. Unfortunately, avant-garde-mainstream-pop strokes of genius like “Vai Malandra” and “Bola Rebola” aren’t there. With “I’d Rather Have Sex” but again an anthem of robust sex-positive pop feminism.
The country-blus nods continue: After the Black Keys dedicated their latest album “Delta Kream” to their Mississippi Hill Country blues heroes Junior Kimbrough and RL Burnside, and Black Keys singer Dan Auerbach has just released a terrific album of previously unknown Son House recordings, celebrate on “Get On Board” (Perro Verde/Nonesuch) now Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal their piedmont blues heroes Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. So splendidly played along as well as commemorative work to remember the black roots of pop.
Anything but atypical: Heinz Rudolf Kunze.
(Photo: Michael Matthey/picture alliance/dpa)
The saddest pop moment of the week was how succinctly the now 65-year-old left-wing pop singer and songwriter Heinz Rudolph Kunze (“Your is my whole heart”) in a major interview with Deutschlandradio Kultur about his father, who was a member of the SS “Totenkopf” division, the most fanatical and brutal of Hitler’s fighters: His “old man” was an “apolitical jerk “, a “moderately intelligent, very funny and very friendly man” who, as a good athlete but a bad student, ran into the arms of the SS recruiters at the age of 19. He easily survived the murderous training of the elite unit and then he was not a concentration camp guard (the “Totenkopf-Division” had its origins in concentration camp guard units), but a front-line soldier, he and his brother, a historian, had that exactly researched. He did shoot, yes, he also spoke openly about it, although Kunze does not want to use the word “murder” for it. When asked if he had shot people, the father said quite frankly: “Yes, I shot because they came running towards us with guns and MPs at the ready.” Oh, was that around? And then it goes on to the victim part, how lucky he was to survive the war and the Russian captivity. Tenor: A “John Wayne for the wrong people”, decorated war hero, yes, but somehow against his will. Coming to terms with the past in Germany in 77 after the end of the war.
The otherwise not so exciting British indie pop band wins the award for the best album title of the week English Teacher. Your new EP is called “Polyawkward” and that’s a compelling addition as an aesthetic category. In other words, a time when polyamory is discussed in the mainstream media is also ripe for poly embarrassment. If only because the same embarrassment can feel so completely different, depending on which role you have in it. From a pleasant shudder (when you deliberately turn social expectations into embarrassment as an act of gentle civil disobedience) to utter shame (when you only notice something completely inappropriate at the precise moment when you can no longer change it). ). As a direct verdict on a situation, “awkward”, which as an English loanword has long since seeped into colloquial German, is above all proof of how strongly direct commentary and/or self-commentation has now also shaped everyday communication. Simply saying or doing something or experiencing something is only one thing, the communicative move in the age of mindfulness is only complete when it is also clear what is to be felt at the moment.
Irritatingly euphoric desperation, or was it desperate euphoria? Harry Styles.
(Photo: Jordan Strauss/dpa)
The Spotify single charts, i.e. the list of the most listened to songs on the most used streaming service in the world, are currently leading again Harry Styles on, with his single “As It Was”. Superficially a somewhat silly, elegiac reflection on a love that is no longer quite fresh, but if you listen more closely, an irritating, euphoric despair blows over you, which makes you shudder at what is going on in the world: “You know it’s not the same as it was”. And what exactly is the man trying to tell us with this bright red, off-the-shoulder glittery jumpsuit with flares? In any case, in the video for the song, he wears it so captivatingly confident that you quickly feel awkward, because you found it a touch awkward at first. Ah, Harry Styles, the pop superstar we still don’t deserve.