At some point, the sensitive artist often no longer wants to have anything to do with his greatest work. Inwardly he distances himself from it, sees other works not given enough attention, ultimately makes a problem out of success, a problem out of everything. On the other hand, how pleasant – and how significant – to hear the singer-songwriter Reinhard Mey talk about his most popular song, “Above the Clouds”, everyone knows it. A folk song in the very best, freshest sense. And Mey now announces it at concerts with words like these: “I may have sung it as many times as I want, as long as they listen to me singing it, it’s like singing it for the very first time .” Who would have something like that in their repertoire: a declaration of love to their own song.
“Above the Clouds” – for those who haven’t been around that long – tells the story of someone watching the airplanes. And imagines that freedom is boundless above the clouds. A longing song, a song against the eternal fears of everyday life, it dates from 1974, when progress was still something to be gained from. “Gasoline is swimming in the puddles, shimmering like a rainbow,” sang Reinhard Mey and didn’t have to worry too much about the environmental impact of this fuel. “Someone is cooking coffee/ in the air traffic control barracks”, someone who puts this term into a song has of course set a monument to the inner beauty of the German language. Although, “Lilienthal’s Dream” is one of his great flying limbs. Mey portrays the aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal, who wanted to fly and was able to fly, but ultimately crashed. In seven minutes: all the wishes and despair of a life, of a person and of all people, as poetic as it is precise: “You can’t explain the longing, you have to experience it yourself / Three steps into the abyss and the feeling of happiness to float.”
His lyrics are never banal, but not overly cerebral either
Reinhard Friedrich Michael Mey, a German singer-songwriter, for many the German songwriter. His lyrics are never banal, but not overly cerebral either. The melodies are catchy. If you think about the 1970s in Germany, you think of the oil crisis, terror, and free love. A turbulent and moving age. Reinhard Mey was incredibly popular back then, and if you listen to all the songs, you can imagine why. At that time he sang about everything that moved people, he put things in order by singing. One would have liked to discuss the things of life with him and get drunk and smoked. Sentimentality was never exaggerated with him, everything stayed in reasonable doses. “The time of the juggler is over”, a farewell song, he sings, and it is more than a touch of laconic: “I’ve done a lot wrong, certainly / If you can forget, forget.”
The thin singer and leather jacket freak, that made him likeable, described the monotony of little people’s lives without getting uplifted, he always described, he never condemned. In “Evenings by your bed” it says: “The eleventh step to the left, then it’s quiet as it was / Like yesterday, like tomorrow, like last year / From the window to the tower clock, a look, it’s late / From the window to the armchair, from armchair to bed.” And, of course, “Gute Nacht,Freunde”, which became famous as a bouncer in various pubs, but is actually about friendship. Friendship that doesn’t have to be affirmed by declarations, but is stable without constantly demanding anything. “Thank you for never asking what’s the point, whether it’s worth it.” Even as a moralist, Reinhard Mey was always one of the unobtrusive types.
“Good night, friends, it’s time for me to go. / What I still have to say, it takes a cigarette / And a last glass while standing.” How wonderfully casual that is.
Being able to see him live again, some fans tweeted, brought tears to their eyes
The singer-songwriter Mey is an observer, a ballad singer, a playful satirist and a master of language who packs the terms umbilical bone, jejunum and cartilaginous membrane into one song as if it were nothing. In his later years he described more and more the family, the inside view is not for everyone, and of course he was made fun of by parodists, but Mey had a certain immunity to whispering from everyone in good time (“Meinachtel Laurelblatt”, 1972). Attributed to Art: “I hear some say that I’m not the same anymore / And others complain that I’m still the same / Then a music critic who lacks arguments says: You used to be fatter . I don’t contradict him.”
His fan base was and is loyal. Being able to see him live again after the pandemic break, some tweeted, brought tears to their eyes. Because Reinhard Mey, who has always existed, a star not only in Germany but also in France and the Netherlands, still records songs, he still gives concerts, his texts are available in Reclam magazines. But he still looks the same as he did back in the heyday of German singer-songwriters. And the fact that he turns eighty this Wednesday cannot really be the case. But it’s actually true.