"Vamos a Marte", let's go to Mars, is the name of the new song by Helene Fischer.

When the title became known a few days ago, one could wonder if she had been impressed by the cosmic arm wrestling of billionaires Musk, Bezos and Branson.

Fischer's song is, how could it be otherwise, a love song - and why, for the starry sky sake, should lovers long for Mars, where it is inhospitable and cold?

Wouldn't it be much hotter on the love planet Venus?

The fact that her duet partner was not one of the three men mentioned, but rather the Latin pop singer Luis Fonsi, did not make the Mars metaphor any more conclusive.

Jörg Thomann

Editor in the "Life" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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Fischer's new single was released this Friday.

Fischer had agreed to this on the Internet with video messages in which she indicated that she had "changed", and finally by countdown: In terms of self-marketing, which in her case includes a good deal of secrecy, Fischer is light years ahead of her national competition .

And how is the song now?

An international pop hit, presented bilingually in German and Spanish, which eats its way down your ear canal with a catchy beat.

Vocally there is nothing to complain about, except that Fischer's voice doesn't sound for the first time as if it were about to burst into sobs from sheer emotion.

Even higher

Unfortunately, there is also a text. Surprisingly, Mars does not play such a major role in this; it only serves as a symbol that Fischer wants to aim even higher this time. Even in her signature song “Atemlos”, she had climbed “on the highest roof in the world”, with no fear of heights; basically that would be the Himalayas, which even appears by name in “Vamos a Marte”. Only this time the world is not enough, it has to be Mars. But it is also very mundane to go to the beach.

More decisive, however, is the sentence presented in Spanish: “We speak a language without words”. That is what it is all about - women and men from different cultures and linguistic areas who do not understand each other but still love. A classic subject that the Beatles took up with “Michelle” or Namika with “Je Ne Parle Pas Francais” - but which hardly makes sense today, in the age of Google Translate. A Latino and a German who can only communicate non-verbally, not even in the universal language of English - two school systems must have failed. The scenario is led ad absurdum by Fischer himself, who at some point also trills in Spanish.

That is definitely preferable to the German. What Fischer's team delivers here is a firework of impure rhymes. "Marte", "Language" and "Said", "Sun" and "Control", "Body" and "Words", "Breathing" and "Waiting": With considerable precision, any harmony is avoided here. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that twelve “lyricists” are listed in the credits, including Fischer and Fonsi himself. Everyone then makes their own rhyme.

The distribution of roles, in which the man sets the direction, does not appear to be really progressive. Come and follow me, Fonsi is allowed to sing while Fischer has "no choice" and loses control. But that's the way it is with Latin lovers like Luis Fonsi, who already gave the commands in his world hit “Despacito”. In the flowery Spanish language, he put his stamp on his beloved and made the waves of the sea scream “Oh, blessed one!”. After all, the Helene Fischer fans were spared such extravagances in the new duet.