From RAMMSTEIN (untitled album) · 2019 · Track 2
Radio
«Radio»
More from the album · RAMMSTEIN (untitled album)
In context
Secretly tuning in to Western stations in the GDR. A radio set turned into the only crack to the outside world.
- GDR
- Censorship
- Music as contraband
- Origin
- From “Rammstein” (2019). Jörn Heitmann's video opens with a reference to Königs Wusterhausen, where the first German radio transmitter was set up in 1920 and which the Nazi regime later took over to broadcast propaganda.
- The German key
- All six members grew up in the German Democratic Republic, where music from Western stations was illegal. The song doesn't turn that experience into a symbol: it names it directly.
- What the band has said
- This is the band's first-hand material; they have not needed to state a reading.
- Live
- In the setlist since the 2019 stadium tour.
Our reading
It is neither nostalgia nor textbook denunciation. Unlike “Deutschland”, which looks at German history from outside and from above, “Radio” looks at it from a bedroom. It explains where the band comes from better than any biography: music as contraband before it was a career. The video widens the frame — it isn't only about the GDR but about a whole century of Germans deciding what may be heard.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
Original (German)
Wir durften nicht dazugehören
Translation
We were not allowed to belong
Verse cited for the purpose of analysis.
Listening to what was banned
All six members of Rammstein grew up in the German Democratic Republic. This song is about one specific experience of that life: secretly tuning in to Western stations, whose music the East German government deemed illegal, as a way of escaping political restrictions.
It is neither nostalgia nor textbook denunciation. It is the description of an object — a radio set — turned into the only available crack to the outside. To understand where the band comes from, this song explains more than any biography: music as contraband before music as career.
It is first-hand material. Unlike “Deutschland”, which looks at German history from outside and above, “Radio” looks at it from inside a bedroom.
The video
Directed by Jörn Heitmann. The band appears in tuxedos from various decades playing at a 1920s-style radio station; the reveal at the end is that they are holograms. It intercuts scenes of citizens obsessed with their radios to a manic degree and riots demanding free and open airwaves.
It opens with a mention of Königs Wusterhausen, where the first German radio transmitter was built in 1920 and which the Nazi regime later seized for propaganda broadcasting. Which is to say: the video is not only about East Germany, but about a whole century of Germans deciding what may be heard.
Context
Released as a single on 26 April 2019, from the untitled seventh album.
Translation and notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The full original lyrics belong to their authors.