Melanie Schiller

Rammstein provozieren. In ihren Songs und Musikvideos spielt die Band mit Doppeldeutigkeiten rund um die deutsche Geschichte und testet die Grenzen des Sag- und Singbaren. Besonders deutlich wird das in ihrer Single „Deutschland“, einer (Anti?)Hymne auf die Nation. Im cineastisch-bombastischen Musikvideo präsentieren sich die Bandmitglieder unter anderem als KZ-Insassen und SS-Offiziere. Alles nur Spektakel? Oder doch politisch? Das Verhältnis von Politik und Pop zeigt sich bei Rammstein in seinen verschiedenen Dimensionen.

This book argues for the importance of popular music in negotiations of national identity, and Germanness in particular. By discussing diverse musical genres and commercially and critically successful songs at the heights of their cultural relevance throughout seventy years of post-war German history, Soundtracking Germany describes how popular music can function as a language for "writing" national narratives. Running chronologically, all chapters historically contextualize and critically discuss the cultural relevance of the respective genre before moving into a close reading of one particularly relevant and appellative case study that reveals specific interrelations between popular music and constructions of Germanness. Close readings of these sonic national narratives in different moments of national transformations reveal changes in the narrative rhetoric as this book explores how Germanness is performatively constructed, challenged, and reaffirmed throughout the course of seventy years.

This book argues for the importance of popular music in negotiations of national identity, and Germanness in particular. By discussing diverse musical genres and commercially and critically successful songs at the heights of their cultural relevance throughout seventy years of post-war German history, Soundtracking Germany describes how popular music can function as a language for "writing" national narratives. Running chronologically, all chapters historically contextualize and critically discuss the cultural relevance of the respective genre before moving into a close reading of one particularly relevant and appellative case study that reveals specific interrelations between popular music and constructions of Germanness. Close readings of these sonic national narratives in different moments of national transformations reveal changes in the narrative rhetoric as this book explores how Germanness is performatively constructed, challenged, and reaffirmed throughout the course of seventy years.