The Peugeot semi-racers with the obligatory castle locks chained to the lampposts, the permanently waved mullet shaked briefly before the next flash of the Olympus Superzoom, and then, all five fingers between the plates: the young people wallow in vinyl heaven.
This scenery would be imaginable in the eighties if it weren't for the colorful smartphones with colour-coordinated AirPod cases, the disposables - for the baby boomers: e-cigarettes with a USB look - and the ecologically degradable bubble tea cup.
What music journalists, artists and sociologists have long since unanimously confirmed: the eighties are celebrating a renaissance.
After the neon-colored nineties and the glittering two-thousanders, i.e. the pop middle ages, the antiquity of pop music is en vogue again with the eighties.
The revival can not only be tied to the second-hand shops that are sprouting up everywhere in the inner cities.
The hair sins on the heads are back.
Likewise the long mothballed analogue film aesthetic that characterizes the Instagram feeds of Generation Z.
And pop music: forty-year-old songs like Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" get over 100 million clicks on YouTube, jump out of nowhere into the top ten of the English and American hit parades and have huge success on TikTok because they are in a Episode of the Netflix series "Stranger Things" were used.
So far, so surprising.
But how do you explain the success of those young artists who only know the 1980s from films, books and stories told by their parents, but now also have strong memories of that decade in terms of style, subject and aesthetics?
This resurgence is probably shaped most strongly by the Neue Deutsche Welle.
In 2005, the gangster rapper Fler tried to ride this wave to success with the album named after her.
As a homage to Falco, Fler wore a T-shirt with the likeness of the flamboyant Viennese on his cover and in the music video and also quoted his disco sweeper "Rock Me Amadeus" musically in the song "NDW 2005".
However, Fler had little in common with the Austrian genre juggler beyond that, he lagged far behind Falco in terms of stylistic originality and commercial success.
The eighties were hit better by the Stuttgart musician Edwin Rosen with his debut song "lighter/cold" from 2020. In his Spotify biography he describes his music as "neueneuedeutschewelle" and thus places himself in the tradition of pop punk and rock music of the eighties, which he would also like to transfer to the musical present.
The fact that he creates a new music genre en passant puts him in the position of the musical Robin Hood, who dares to try new things with verve and esprit and thus outsmarts the established music giants.
Melancholy and yet optimistic
Not much is known about Edwin Rosen.
According to Wikipedia, his social media accounts and the few interviews he has given to some music media, the 1998-born Stuttgarter, who is studying philosophy and English to become a teacher, is now under contract with a sub-label of Universal and is on his first solo tour this year .
His first success "lighter/colder" is the result of university exam stress.
To distract himself, he had simply uploaded the piece to Spotify himself.
What followed was surprising and gratifying: a short time later, a friend told him that the song already had over a million clicks.
How can this success be explained?
The song begins with a programmed offbeat from the drum machine, which is stoically sustained throughout the piece and gives it a decent drive.
In addition, a synthesizer sound typical of the eighties.
The piece draws its effect from a contrast: melancholic and yet optimistic, familiar to listen to, yet futuristic, enormously easy, although exorbitantly difficult.
This intro is followed by the singing with an unmistakable timbre: