From Zeit · 2022 · Track 11
Adieu
«Farewell»
More from the album · Zeit
In context
The last track of an album obsessed with things ending. Instead of resolving that tension, it accepts it: a farewell said to someone who isn't coming back.
- Farewell
- Endings
- Passage of time
- Origin
- Closes “Zeit” (2022). The video was released on 24 November 2022, directed by Specter Berlin — who also made “Deutschland” — and was shot at the Palais Garnier, the historic Paris opera house.
- The German key
- The title is French, not German, and that is part of the gesture. “Adieu” is not a “see you later”: it carries the word for God inside it and has been used for centuries for the final goodbye, the one said to the dead. The band could have chosen half a dozen German words for the same thing and picked the one that allows no return.
- What the band has said
- The band has never said who it is addressed to, or whether it is saying goodbye to someone or to itself.
- Live
- In the setlist since the 2022 tour, as the closer.
Our reading
After almost thirty years of catalogue, a song like this in the final slot of an album is inevitably read one way: the band saying goodbye to someone, or rehearsing its own farewell. They never say so — and that is the point.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
How you close a record about time
Zeit is an album obsessed with things running out: the title track asks for the moment to stop, “Zick Zack” laughs at those who pay to pretend it did, “Dicke Titten” is about a man whose years slipped by alone. “Adieu” is the final track, and instead of resolving that tension it accepts it: a farewell in full, said to someone who is leaving and not coming back.
The title is French, not German, and that is part of the gesture. Adieu is not a “see you later”; it carries the word for God inside it and has been used for centuries as the definitive goodbye, the one said to the dead. The band could have picked half a dozen German words for the same thing and chose the one that admits no return.
After nearly thirty years of catalogue, a song like that in the last slot of a record reads one way: the band saying goodbye to someone, or rehearsing its own farewell. They never say so. That is the point.
The video
It was released on 24 November 2022 and directed by the German director Specter Berlin, who also made “Deutschland”. It was filmed at the Palais Garnier — the historic Paris opera house — and in a studio in the same city.
The location is not decorative. Rammstein have a long relationship with Paris: it is where they recorded Rammstein: Paris, the live document from the Made in Germany tour (2012). Closing the Zeit cycle inside the most ornate building in that city, rather than a factory or a German wasteland, frames the farewell in velvet and gold instead of the steel the band usually reaches for.
Context
Eleventh and final track on Zeit (29 April 2022) and the record’s fifth and last single, in November 2022.
Notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The original lyrics belong to their authors and are not reproduced in this entry.