What if a German song became the hit of the summer? The title Gut Genug (“pretty good”) by the German rap group Blumengarten (“Garden Flowers”), released in early May across the Rhine, has spread throughout the world. By mid-June, the song had been viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube and had more than 14 million views on Instagram. Sony Music then indicated that it had recorded more than 2.5 million streaming streams in the space of a single day.
The key to success? A short, catchy and catchy chorus. In his surprisingly high-pitched voice, on a rhythmic electronic pulsation, Rayan, the singer of Blumengarten begins “du bist gut genug” (“you are quite good”), four words which form a sweet melody and easily enter the head.
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Internet users around the world are trying to reproduce it. Videos abound where Americans, not speaking a word of Goethe’s language, phonetically sing “Dobbie scoot canoe”. “I even heard a cover of the chorus in Finnish,” laughs the German rapper. The incomprehension of the lyrics and their distortion contribute to the virality of the title, just like the memes (animated images) which have flourished on social networks, TikTok in the lead, repeating this refrain.
Ode to self-acceptance
Personalities from the world of music also helped to popularize this title. It was thus taken up by the American rapper Wiz Khalifa or even on the Instagram page with 11 million subscribers of the American singer Lizzo, in a playback video.
According to Rayan, the German rapper, the message conveyed by the song which encourages us to accept ourselves as we are, contributes to its success. “You’re good enough, I don’t know what the world tells you, just be yourself,” he sings. By repeating “du bist genug” in the refrain, he responds to the doubts expressed by German rapper Shirin David, guest on the song, who explains in particular having difficulty choosing between her career and a family life. “‘You’re good enough’ is a message to hear in a world obsessed with optimization and beauty,” the rapper told Die Welt newspaper.
A message not really to the taste of the journalist who denounces in his article “an attitude unfortunately all too familiar in the German artistic and cultural environment” encouraging laziness. “Since we’re already pretty good: why bother trying? Why change anything? Why have ambitions? “, asks Volker Corsten, editor in the “Lifestyle” section of the daily Die Welt.
Previous German-speaking hits
This success was in any case unexpected for the duo of German artists who make up the group Blumengarten and who had never before experienced such fame. It must be said that titles in German languages that break through internationally are very rare.
Without going back to the very famous Lili Marleen by Marlene Dietrich in 1944, many still remember the hit of the year 1983 by singer Nena 99 Luftballons. The single had met with global success with lyrics in favor of demilitarization, in the midst of the Cold War. “99 ministers of war; Match and can of gasoline; They thought they were smart; They especially smell the big booty; Shouted: war and wanted power; Damn, who would have thought; That we can get there; Because of 99 balloons,” intoned the brunette singer.
At the very beginning of the 1980s, the electronic music group Kraftwerk also enjoyed international success with their album Computer World. One of their old songs Radioactivity (1975) subsequently became a global hit. At the same period, the Austrian singer Falco also had great success abroad, with his title Der Kommissar (1982), which mixed German, English and Italian and ranked 3rd in sales in France.
Rock has also sometimes brought German to the forefront. First with the Berlin metal group Rammstein, revealed to the public in 1997 with the hit Du hast. Their world tour, with controversial stagings during concerts, took them to 49 countries.
More mainstream, the alternative rock group Tokio Hotel, made up of four boys with emo style (black hair, bangs, eye makeup) achieved international fame at the end of the 2000s with the album Scream (2007) and the hit Monsoon. Although Tokio Hotel recorded English versions of its songs, several German tracks also met with great success abroad, helping to revive interest in learning the language. In 2008, the director of the Goethe-Institut in Toulouse declared to La Dépêche du Midi: “Many young people who choose German do so to understand the lyrics of their songs. »
No one knows if the success of “Gut genug” will be of sufficient magnitude to have the same repercussions and if it will be lasting. In the meantime, rapper Rayan is enjoying it before starting his tour in Germany at the beginning of July.
