Annett Louisan's new album "Babyblue" is colorful and abstruse like life - both lyrically and melodically. The singer deals with topics such as love, disappointments, partnership, death and faith, but also with aging.
So she sings in the gentle, chanson-like, melancholic "Die Mittlerer Jahre": "I don't want to be 20 again." The 45-year-old tells the German Press Agency in Hamburg why that is: "I've become more quick-witted and fun and I have better sex than before."
Louisan wants to find beauty in old age
"I try to look at aging differently and to find wisdom and beauty in it that it definitely holds. Not getting old, not staying young, but getting more every day. In order to live like this, you shouldn't repress or hold on too much. That sometimes it's not that easy - letting go of the past."
That's why the song "The fabulous world of amnesia" is also about repression in a humorous way. "In on one side, out on the other" is what it says, accompanied by a lively melody and with the puns so typical of Louisan. This is also the case with "Hallo Julia", which initially strongly reminds of Bach's Prelude in C major, later of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", and which flows like a chorale.
Title song related to Hamburg's prostitution mile
The light and airy "L'Amour" is really in the tradition of French chansons, in which the singer conjures up a wonderfully tender smokey voice. The title song "Babyblue" is completely different. It's about the "most beautiful woman on Herbertstrasse" (that notorious prostitution mile in Hamburg where women are not allowed), whose stage name is Babyblue. Lines like "she gave me love, the love I needed" make me think.
The potpourri of topics that "Babyblue" offers also includes friendship. In the anthem-like song "Blood Sisters," Annett Louisan sings, "Men come and go" and "still waters run deep, but ours run deeper." For her, friends are like a "self-chosen family" in which there is "absolute trust".
Varied melodies and melody-text-scissors
In addition to poetic texts with wordplay, melody-text-scissors are typical for the native of Hamburg. So she sings with a sweet voice about being cheated in the song "Arsch": "You love like an ass" and "You made fun of me", which contradicts her soft voice. At the end she sings about death, lists shattered dreams with a certain longing for death.
For Annett Louisan, such a shattered dream also refers to love: "The pain of love does not come from the loss of a person, but from the loss of the dream that you tied to this person." And so Annett Louisan tells stories on "Babyblue", which with their varied melodies show the wide spectrum of the singer and are a thoroughly (relaxing) exciting listening pleasure.
