We're all living in Amerika,
Amerika is wunderbar.
We're all living in Amerika,
Amerika, Amerika.
The opening lines of the second single from Rammstein's forthcoming album Reise, Reise might lead the credulous to believe the German techno-industrial-metal band to have moved to the United States wearing huge smiles which are dwarfed only by their outpouring of love for all things American. Sadly--for Amerikaners at any rate--it's quite the opposite.
Amerika represents a departure from Rammstein's usual barrage of twisted love and sex music and dives head-first into the polluted sea of international politics. I think this is fairly representative of the growing public awareness and resentment by people outside the United States of the virus-like spread of American pseudo-culture and mores.
Ich zeige euch wie´s richtig geht.
The song uses dancing as a metaphor for both government and individual thought. The dancers are, of course, the United States and everyone else. The American dancer wants to lead, control, and instruct his assumedly incompetent dance partner. The dancing partner, if reluctant, finds himself forced to dance. In many ways this is one of the more poignant political statements I've heard made in popular music in the last few years.
Musik kommt aus dem Weißen Haus
To be fair, some of the things that Rammstein is complaining about in the song are not strictly the sole domain of the United States. The spread of "free market" mentality (and subsequent economic domination) to impoverished countries is most often done by the heavy-handed practices of the World Bank. I will not dispute that U.S. interests often stand to gain the most in those situations, but the music for that and for the cultural annexation of the world does not "come from the White House", as they sing.
nach Afrika kommt Santa Claus,
und vor Paris steht Mickey Maus.
While the song gets a little off-track with the primary theme a couple of times, the main thread can be summarized in the above lines which translate to "Santa Claus comes to Africa, and Mickey Mouse stands before Paris." The uprooting and replacement of the varied cultures of the world with American ideals and icons, which is a phenomena known as cultural imperialism in media theory.
This is not a love song,
I don´t sing my mother tongue
The clever juxtaposition of English and German in the song is one of the more amusing bits. Until near the end of the song, the smiling, head-bobbing, non-German-speaking American is assumed to believe that it's a song glorifying America and things American, as the chorus is mostly English and states plainly, "America is wunderbar." The criticism, metaphorical and otherwise, is all in German, which may in itself be a statement about America's mono-linguistic culture and the widely known problems with the education system here.
However, Rammstein discards the ruse with the above lyric, and makes it plain to all that the meat of the song is buried within the German lyrics.
Lyric snippets from:
All lyrics © Copyright 2004 Rammstein and used within Fair Use guidelines.