From Sehnsucht · 1997 · Track 10
Eifersucht
«Jealousy»
More from the album · Sehnsucht
In context
Jealousy told without ornament, in the band's most direct language. Its starting point was not a personal anecdote but a film, and it is one of the least played songs in the whole catalogue.
- Jealousy
- Film
- Rarity
- Origin
- Tenth song on “Sehnsucht”, recorded in 1996 at Temple Studios in Malta; it was never a single. According to RammWiki it is based on Peter Greenaway's “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” (1989). The main guitar riff recalls the 1996 live version of “Schwarzes Glas”, a song that predates the album and was never released on any album.
- Live
- There is only one record of a live performance, on 26 September 1997. One of the least played songs in the repertoire, compared with tracks from the same album such as “Bestrafe mich”, with more than 150 performances.
Our reading
The borrowed origin is what stands out: the band usually starts from its own anecdotes, from Till's poems or from words in the German language, and here the story comes from outside and the lyrics simply translate it into Rammstein's direct idiom. That it has hardly ever been played live also suggests it never quite belonged to them.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
A film as a starting point
According to RammWiki, the song is based on The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), Peter Greenaway’s film about a violent restaurant owner, the wife who cheats on him, and the gruesome ending the cook engineers. It’s an uncommon origin within the band’s catalogue, which usually draws from personal anecdotes, Till Lindemann’s poems, or the German language itself rather than film references — here the “plot” is borrowed, and the lyric translates it into Rammstein’s usual bluntness.
A production detail: the main guitar riff recalls the 1996 live version of “Schwarzes Glas,” a pre-Sehnsucht song that was never released on any album.
Context
Tenth track on Sehnsucht, recorded in 1996 at Temple Studios in Malta. It was never a single.
Live
There is only one documented live performance, on 26 September 1997 — making it one of the least-played songs in the band’s entire repertoire, next to tracks from the same album like “Bestrafe mich,” which has been played over 150 times.
Notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The original lyrics belong to their authors and are not reproduced in this entry.