From Rosenrot · 2005 · Track 10
Feuer und Wasser
«Fire and Water»
More from the album · Rosenrot
In context
Two elements that cancel each other out the moment they touch, as a metaphor for two forces that cannot coexist however hard they try.
- Incompatibility
- Desire
- Elements
- Origin
- From “Rosenrot” (2005). One production detail survived the mix: you can hear a vocal exhale after one of the lines, which is suspected not to have been planned and still stayed on the album version.
- The German key
- “Feuer und Wasser” is a fixed German formula for the irreconcilable, the equivalent of the English “oil and water”. The song takes it literally and develops it into a scene.
- What the band has said
- Till Lindemann told where it came from: “Quite a few Rammstein passages have come to me while I'm training. Feuer und Wasser, for example, is an indoor-swimming-pool song.”
- Live
- Never performed live.
Our reading
The title does all the conceptual work, and the swimming-pool anecdote makes it less solemn than it sounds: the image didn't come from reflection but from swimming.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
Written while swimming
Till Lindemann explained where the idea came from: “I’ve already thought up quite a few Rammstein passages when I’m training. ‘Feuer und Wasser,’ for example, is a swimming hall song.” The title — fire and water — is the lyric’s central image: two elements that cancel each other out the moment they touch, used as a metaphor for two forces, or two people, that can’t coexist no matter how hard they try.
One production detail survived the final mix: a vocal exhale is audible after one of the lines, suspected to be unplanned and left in on the album version anyway.
Context
Tenth track on Rosenrot, recorded in 2003 at El Cortijo Studio in Málaga, Spain, released 28 October 2005. It was never a single.
Notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The original lyrics belong to their authors and are not reproduced in this entry.