Tristan Brusch

The Deutsches Theater München presents

Pop music with depth

Great pop music with depth, but not afraid of the grand gesture and harmony. That’s what distinguishes Tristan Brusch‘s songs. His new album “Am Wahn” will be released on 24 March. In autumn, the songwriter, musician, singer and poet, who brings famous colleagues like Jacques Brel or Serge Gainsbourg to mind, will go on tour with it.

Unambiguous and ambiguous lyrics

Something you don’t find that often in this country: Ambiguity in pop. We Germans really like to sing, say and explain exactly what is meant. And in such a way that even the last person understands. Precision is highly valued in the land of engineers. That’s honourable, but in connection with music it often leads to predictability and a heavy pedagogical undertone. In this respect, it is good that there are songwriters and singers like Tristan Brusch. The 34-year-old belongs to that rare species of singers who brilliantly master the playful use of unambiguously ambiguous metaphors in song lyrics. With Tristan Brusch, a song always means exactly what it means to the listener at the moment of hearing it, in theory more or less everything. The highest art of all.

It’s not just about the words

He brought this approach to the supposedly so difficult German pop language to perfection as early as 2021 on his last album Am Rest; with the direct successor Am Wahn, he is now finally putting the finishing touches on his poetry. Brusch has understood: Pop is never just about the words you sing, but always about the mixture of performance, lyrics, melody, instrumentation and arrangement. Only from all these components does the temperature and meaning of a song ultimately form. “When I say something very explicit in my music, I feel downright ashamed because I automatically exclude so many points of view,” says Tristan Brusch. “I find it much more interesting not to be told on the nose how to feel and so to let the reaction to a song develop within the person.”

Sky-high to death-defying

Brusch’s songs are sky-high to deathly sad and at the same time insanely sublime and proud, because they know life in all its facets and don’t gloss over it. Jacques Brel or Serge Gainsbourg come to mind, and to this the strings revel and wail as in the great days of European pop and chanson. But one also thinks of Scott Walker and a bit of Element of Crime, because Brusch’s associative free way of writing lyrics is not dissimilar to that of Sven Regener, even though Brusch goes to work in a much more heartfelt way. Above all, this music makes you think of Tristan Brusch himself anyway, and of the impressive development this man has taken. How Brusch, who was born in Gelsenkirchen and grew up in Tübingen as the child of a highly musical family, has developed in the years since his first EPs and debut Paradies into one of the most stirring and effective German songwriters, chansoniers and performers is one of the most inspiring and great pop stories of recent years.