Pop Tag

The sun has brought life to a halt. It’s crawling through the rugged walls. The faded terracotta walls throw back its reflections. It’s wearing down the parasols that have seen better days anyway. It’s dazzling heat is not yet ready to disappear. There is a couple sitting on a café patio looking towards the sea. He’s wearing a white linen shirt, a straw hat and linen pants. In his right hand he is holding on to a thick cigar. His left hand playing with the little spoon. He’s calmly stirringRead More

It’s a Thursday night and I am bored and slightly angry. I am not sitting alone at home. I am not bored because I have no one to interact with. Fun fact, I am at a party. I know plenty of people here and I am having a good time with free drinks, nice catch up talks, small talk and so on. I am not complaining about the occasion – it’s the aftershow party of the German Echo music awards – I actually like being here. The show was awfulRead More

It must have been in early 2015 when I find myself sitting in the office of a record company. I’m here to talk about the labels‘ forthcoming releases and have a bit of a general catch up to do. We smoke a few cigarettes, drink a coffee or two and listen to some interesting artists. Towards the end of the meeting I get shown a video of an artist the label just recently signed. They were out with him in California and used the time to shoot a video theyRead More

When I get asked to review new hyped band – especially from Berlin – I usually don’t expect anything. Which makes it even nicer when I am proven wrong. This has been the case with todays’ band Isolation Berlin. The four boys have recently been mentioned a lot in feature pages and it seems as if everyone agrees that they are the future of German pop music. The pressure therefore is obviously on and everyone expects their debut album Und aus den Wolken tropft die Zeit to be a hugeRead More

How the music industry needs to learn from their youngest audience.  First of all, I’m not really old yet. But in terms of rock and pop music hall of fame, I’ve reached the pinnacle. The year I should say farewell via overdose (which I can’t do because I don’t do drugs), gun to your head (quite difficult this one as well, as German laws on guns are very strict) or alcohol (ok, I do drink, but I never take any medication with it). I don’t see it happening, whichRead More

It’s been a long time since that song with handclaps and piano graced our radio stations. Boy came out of nowhere and drove everyone (starting from my sister, to my mom and even my grandma would have tapped her feet to that song if she would have been alive then) a little crazy. Once the two adorable girls had taken over Germany, entering the top 10 with their debut gold album Mutual Friends they took the next step and conquered the world. From their debut in 2011 they were constantlyRead More

Lapsley Painter is a master of the little, the pure essence of beauty in little over 3 minutes. This is as close you will get to pop perfection. Nowadays musicians sit in their bedrooms adding tracks and tracks, layer after layer to their sounds. Always looking to make a song sounding as big as you can get. Squeezing endless effects, virtual instruments and synthesizers over another, forgetting the song in the process. Overwhelmed with choice and possibilities (remember, the Beatles recorded their albums with only four tracks, then eight andRead More

So Mumford & Sons have released a new record. It’s called ‚Wilder Mind‘ and apparently everybody is supposed to hate it. All the critics who were all so buzzing about this band when they played ‚true folk songs‘ are now hating the band. But why?Read More

In this installment of Talking Pop, author Carlo is talking about his love for Florence And The Machine. How she’s been haunting him since her first single and why music is always so closely connected to ones own biography. I’m sitting in my parents living room in 2009. The tv is on, and a Swiss television station is running. It’s sometime in the afternoon and instead of sitcoms or talkshows, they are showing music videos. There’s this one video with flowers in front of a white backdrop. A red hairedRead More

Scandinavia, you beautiful endless reservoir of great music. Scandinavia, I love you for making the sun disappear for a few months each winter making young people stay in their own homes with too much alcohol, their instruments and their creativity. Women of music, I love you because you grace us with so much talent and music that I feel like an incredibly dull little boy with my acoustic guitar and my stupid teenage songs about my sad sad love life. This article is a dedication to the girls in popRead More