From Reise, Reise · 2004 · Track 4
Keine Lust
«No desire»
More from the album · Reise, Reise
In context
A band that makes intensity its trade devotes an entire song to listlessness. Laziness pushed until it becomes an almost medical condition.
- Listlessness
- Excess
- Self-parody
- Origin
- From “Reise, Reise” (2004), single released on 28 February 2005. The video was drummer Christoph Schneider's idea and was nominated for best video at that year's MTV Europe Music Awards.
- The German key
- “Lust” is not “lust”, even though it looks like it: it means **wanting to**, in the most everyday sense. “Ich habe keine Lust” is what any German says when they don't feel like going out or getting up. It is a domestic phrase, not an existential one — and that's the joke. For German learners, the structure “keine Lust zu” + verb repeats so many times that it sticks.
- What the band has said
- Richard Kruspe explained the fatness in the video: “Us being fat is just a symbol of excess. It's really about going back to the beginning.”
- Live
- A regular in the setlist since October 2004, with Flake appearing in his motorized wheelchair as a nod to the video.
Our reading
It is not a joke about weight but an image of saturation: the band had ten years of success behind it and portrayed itself as fed up, heavy and with no desire to keep being that.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
Original (German)
Ich hab keine Lust
Translation
I don't feel like it
Verse cited for the purpose of analysis.
No desire
Lust in German is not “lust”, despite appearances: it is the inclination to do something, in the most everyday sense. Ich habe keine Lust is what any German says when they do not feel like going out, working or getting up. It is a domestic phrase, not an existential declaration.
And that is the joke: a band whose trade is intensity devotes a whole song to not being bothered. The lyrics list everything the character does not feel like doing — moving, eating, going out, feeling — until laziness becomes almost a medical state.
For anyone learning German it is among the most useful songs in the catalogue: the structure keine Lust zu + verb repeats so often that it sticks.
The video
The band arrives in classic luxury cars, visibly overweight and dressed in white, and plays in an underground car park with dusty instruments. Flake arrives in a motorized wheelchair and is the only one without padding.
The idea came from drummer Christoph Schneider, and Richard Kruspe explained what the weight meant:
“The fact that we are fat is just symbolic for excess. It’s really just about returning to the beginning.”
So it is not a joke about weight, it is an image of saturation. The band had ten years of success behind it and portrayed itself as fed up, heavy and unwilling to keep being that. It was nominated for Best Video at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards.
Context
From Reise, Reise; single released 28 February 2005.
Translation and notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The full original lyrics belong to their authors.