By Lisa Schneider
And once you figure out what it is, i.e. the thing you’re suffering from, everything gets better. Or not, namely when the thing is a human being and you love that human being unreasonably half, fully or far too much. Laurenz Jandl wrote a love song as Lonely Inc., and of course it’s not a love song at all.
So here we are again in the boat of toxic relationships, no one wants to hear the word anymore, but the meaning still doesn’t go away. There’s the guy (is it always a guy?) who not only doesn’t call, who also doesn’t care about how the other person’s emotional state is balanced and whether a good night’s sleep is even possible. You can recognize fuck-ups not only by their haircut, but when a song begins with the lines “Sober up / get a job,” we know quite well which corner we are sitting in.
“For the love of god,” the song “Memphis” continues, and that fits both the situation and the title. Because we all like watching American TV series, we know how it often works, but we don’t have to think too far outside the box. But Laurenz Jandl always liked doing that, in fact you might think he would really like to be there, over there, and play the guitar into the vastness that (also) defines Tennessee. This has less to do with Elvis than with all the other musical culture that we owe to these latitudes. And that has to do with the fact that Laurenz Jandl has always been one of the best songwriters that we can surround ourselves with here.
- All songs for Sunday on FM4
- The esteemed science and pop journalists Thomas Kramar and Heide Rampetzreiter also make an appearance in the Press on Sunday their thoughts on the same song.
Sober up, then! You’re not a dog, you don’t have to put up with this, yeah, heard that often. The advice that you often give people in the best faith becomes obsolete if empathy is missing. As if someone would voluntarily choose to be miserable or to stay where they become miserable. Also nice and American: the idea of perhaps more suburban life, where there is nothing else and certainly no way out. Where you are chained to the person for various reasons, and then they know that and play their own lottery with it.
Let him go, he’s not worth it, you can only use phrases when you actually know better. In the end there is no solution anyway, perhaps the emotional reserves of strength will be tapped one last time and, in the best case scenario, something will change. A good song for those who have ever been to such a point, i.e. a good four-fifths of humanity. So it’s a good song because it’s for just about everyone.
