From RAMMSTEIN (untitled album) · 2019 · Track 9
Weit weg
«Far away»
More from the album · RAMMSTEIN (untitled album)
In context
A man looks through the window into the room across the way. The distance isn't physical: there has never been any contact and there never will be.
- Voyeurism
- Distance
- Fantasy
- Origin
- From the 2019 untitled album. The lyric is a reworked version of “Mitternacht”, a poem Till Lindemann published in “In stillen Nächten” (2013). The bridge keeps that source almost intact.
- The German key
- The chorus — “so close, so far from you” — sums up the whole thing exactly. It is the same procedure as “Waidmanns Heil”: a text that already existed on paper enters the catalogue reworked.
- What the band has said
- The band has not commented on the song; the link to the poem is documented by its earlier publication.
- Live
- Never performed live: it was one of the two songs from the album left out of the 2019 tour.
Our reading
When she lets her clothes fall, the song doesn't describe what he sees: it describes what happens to him. He ends up standing by the window frame with “a sun in his hand” — an image that can be read as ecstasy or as masturbation, and the song leaves both open.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
Original (German)
Ganz nah so weit weg von dir
Translation
So close so far away from you
Verse cited for the purpose of analysis.
On the other side of the glass
Nobody can describe the picture. That is how it opens: a man with his face pressed against his own window, hoping she leaves the light on. He has never seen her without clothes; she is the mistress of his fantasy. He takes the glasses off his face and sings a trembling melody.
When the room opposite fills with moonlight and she lets everything fall, the song does not describe what he sees: it describes what happens to him. His breath stops, his heart races, and he paints his own colours onto her image. He ends up standing by the window frame with a sun in his hand — an image that reads as ecstasy or as masturbation, and the song leaves both open.
The chorus is the exact summary of all of it: so close, so far away from you. The distance is not physical — the glass is a few metres — it is that there has never been contact and there never will be.
The poem behind it
The lyrics are a reworked version of “Mitternacht”, a poem published by Till Lindemann in his book In stillen Nächten (2013). The bridge keeps that origin almost intact: it is midnight again, I steal the sunlight from us, because it is always dark when the moon kisses the stars.
It is one of several texts from the poetry collection that pass straight into the band’s catalogue — on this same album, so do “Was ich liebe”, “Hallomann” and “Sex” — and that explains the tone: there is no stadium chorus, just a single voice describing an obsession.
Context
Ninth track on the untitled 2019 album, RAMMSTEIN (17 May 2019), recorded in 2018 at Studio La Fabrique in France with Olsen Involtini producing. On 18 April 2019, a month before the record, the band uploaded a synth-only snippet of the song to its official YouTube channel.
Translation and notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The full original lyrics belong to their authors.