User:PhiSch94/Menschen Leben Tanzen Welt

Menschen Leben Tanzen Welt (English: People Life Dance World) is a song by the German satirist Jan Böhmermann. It was presented during his TV show Neo Magazin Royale on 6 April 2017 and released on the same day.

Background
On 6 April 2017, Böhmermann criticised the German pop industry and the Echo Award ceremony, which was planned for the next day, in his show Neo Magazin Royale. The 20 minute long monologue had already been released on YouTube the day before. Amongst others, he criticised Max Giesinger, Tim Bendzko and Matthias Schweighöfer, who, according to Böhmermann, did not write their own lyrics and focussed more on their revenue than meaningful content. He refers to them as the "new German pop poets" and claims that their songs have "trivial lyrics", sounding like "advertising messages". Furthermore, the music videos contained numerous product placements. To prove how standardised and replaceable German pop songs were, Böhmermann and his production team collected advertising slogans, phrases of current pop songs and tweets of the German YouTubers Bianca Heinicke and Sami Slimani. Those text fragments were then randomly put together at ZOOM Erlebniswelt Gelsenkirchen by five chimpanzees, creating the finished song lyrics. Accordingly, the pseudonym "Jim Pandzko" is a pun made up of "Tim Bendzko" and "chimpanzee". The songwriters registered with GEMA, Bono Beau and Olaf Utan, are word plays made up of „Bonobo“ and „Orangutan“, too. Menschen Leben Tanzen Welt was recorded at Studio Debussy in Essen. Audio mixing was done at Klangwelt Studio, also in Essen. Böhmermann's aim is that the song wins the Echo Award 2018. All revenues will go to the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne.

Music and Content
Menschen Leben Tanzen Welt is composed in verse–chorus form. The content is made up of different, randomly combined text fragments such as quotes, tweets and advertising slogans. Böhmermann states that the words in the title Menschen (English: people), Leben (live), Tanzen (dance) and Welt (world) describe the four most used themes in German pop music. In addition, the chorus uses the lyrics „Oh oh eh oh oh“ to make remembering and singing along to the song easier.

Reception and Reactions
The media responded positively to Menschen Leben Tanzen Welt. Stern wrote: "you cannot illustrate the state of German pop music in 2017 any better than with a song that was written in such a short time and composed by apes". In a review which takes the satirical vein of the song, Musikexpress claims that the song is the most emotional one you can listen to today and unusually catchy.

The singer of the German band Die Toten Hosen, Campino, said during the Echo Award Ceremony 2017 as a reference to the video: "It's better to be uncool than a cool asshole, who cannot be constructive in any way". He also talked about the "Böhmermann Zeitgeist banter“. Böhmermann responded on his Facebook page, still impersonating an uprising young musician, with empty phrases and quotes from songs of "German pop poets" and Die Toten Hosen. Max Giesinger says that he "can see the humour in the video".

Commercial success
Shortly after the release, Menschen Leben Tanzen Welt temporarily reached number one in the German iTunes- and Amazon-charts. Only one day later, the song entered the official German charts in 84th place. In its second week in the charts, it entered top ten in 10th place. It is Böhmermann's second top ten success in Germany together with Ich hab Polizei. During its third week in the charts, Menschen Leben Tanzen Welt dropped to 33rd place and was not listed in them after that. Ö3 Austria Top 40's charts listed the song in 46th place for one week.

Music video
The video to Menschen Leben Tanzen Welt shows Böhmermann singing and being similarly dressed as Max Giesinger in his video to Wenn sie tanzt. This is interrupted by sections of premade film material - so called stock footage. Another element is the aggressive product placement of the imaginary drinks brand Glump.