GROSSSTADTGEFLÜSTER

In the organizer's words:

GROSSSTADTGEFLÜSTER at SUMMER IN THE CITY 2025 at the Rheinbühne, Malakoff Terrace in Mainz

Grossstadtgeflüster, the Berlin band that has been spanning the arc of good taste from both sides since 2003 and has made many, many, many people happy with its 1000 or so concerts, is not back, but still here. With new material in her hand luggage.

Jen Bender (vox), Raphael Schalz (keys) and Chriz Falk (drums) are only reliable in their unpredictability as to what the next song will sound like. With evergreens like "Fickt-Euch-Allee" or "Feierabend", they are constantly banging out hits that seem subcultural, but then ensure a good mood across generations and genres.

There's always a bit of rave in there, a bit of pop, a bit of punk, a bit of hip hop, garnished with stylistic ricochets and U-turns, a lot of synths and a latent tendency towards eccentricity.

The common thread is formed by the lyrics, which were awarded the GEMA Music Authors' Prize last year and traditionally form a web of wordplay, irony, double rhymes, meta-levels and punchlines between philosophical depth and hype album calendar pages.

The anthems of Grossstadtgeflüster are dancing declarations of independence, head-nodding liberation blows from social or self-made pressure of expectation, popping ping-pongs between megalomania and failure. But they never point the finger at others, let alone kick them downwards.

With a suspicious eye on the entire human species and a loving eye on the individual, the ambivalence of existence has been celebrated for two decades and six studio albums (including two EPs).

And even if they have always eluded clear categories, it works... Over 100 million clicks on Spotify alone, over 50 million on YouTube, long since an established party act at festivals across the country, the last two indoor tours completely sold out...plus wonderful features with artists such as Danger Dan, Mine and Fatoni. Jen Bender, the larger-than-life 1.59 tall front woman of Grossstadtgeflüster, a Berlin plant with a Berlin snout, is the personified antithesis of the filter-infested social media age.

As if she had fallen into a pot of broken cables as a child, Jen rumbles across every stage and seems almost age-appropriate in her determined procrastination of maturing processes. She sings, she flexes, she spits, she roars, makes beats, composes and writes for herself and others. In this way alone, she deliberately kicks all those who feel disturbed in their tried-and-tested order in the butt and, incidentally, offers more identification potential as a woman than any rhinestone-covered feminist flag.

In short, she offers an alternative female role that would make Siegmund Freud call for his mother in a state of uncertainty.