From Sehnsucht · 1997 · Track 6
Bück dich
«Bend down»
More from the album · Sehnsucht
In context
Short, repetitive lyrics about domination and submission, with no literary metaphor or learned reference: it is the most direct register in the catalogue, and to a large extent that is the point. Its staging ended with two band members arrested in the United States.
- Domination
- Provocation
- Censorship
- Origin
- On 5 June 1999, after the concert at The Palladium in Worcester, Massachusetts, during the “Sehnsucht” tour, police arrested Till Lindemann and Christian “Flake” Lorenz and charged them with lewd and lascivious behaviour over the theatrical routine for this song. They spent the night in custody, were released on 25 dollars' bail and ended up paying a 100-dollar fine. The lasting consequence was something else: for years, Lindemann had to explain that arrest in customs interviews every time he entered the United States.
Our reading
We include it because of the gap between what the band does on stage and how it is read outside Germany: a routine conceived as deliberate provocation ended up prosecuted as a crime in another country. Rammstein alternate songs with layers of learned reference and others that offer no interpretive way out, and this is one of the latter — claiming there is some elevated reading underneath would mean inventing one.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
Original (German)
Bück dich
Translation
Bend down
Verse cited for the purpose of analysis.
Worcester, 1999
On 5 June 1999, after the show at The Palladium in Worcester, Massachusetts, on the Sehnsucht tour, police arrested Till Lindemann and Christian “Flake” Lorenz and charged them with lewd and lascivious behaviour.
The cause was this song’s staging. According to a statement by Sergeant Thomas Radula of the Worcester Police Department, Lindemann simulated a sex act with Flake onstage using a phallic object that shot liquid over the crowd.
They spent the night in custody, were released the next day on $25 bail and, after months of legal argument, ended up paying a $100 fine. The lasting consequence was a different one: Lindemann had to explain that arrest at customs interviews every time he entered the United States for years afterwards.
What the song says
The lyrics are short, repetitive and about domination and submission. There is no literary metaphor here, no Goethe quotation: it is the most direct register in the catalogue, and that is largely the point. Rammstein alternates songs layered with learned reference — “Rosenrot”, “Dalai Lama” — with others that offer no interpretive exit at all.
Why we include it
Not for the scandal. We include it because it is the clearest example of the distance between what the band does onstage and how it reads outside Germany: a theatrical number conceived as deliberate provocation ended up prosecuted as a crime in another country. That collision explains much of the band’s international reputation, and it also explains why an archive has to document it rather than walk around it.
Translation and notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The full original lyrics belong to their authors.