JAN DELAY & DISKO No. 1

In the organizer's words:

When was the first time you heard Jan Delay? At the Weser Stadium, when a really good soccer song rattled through the oval for a change? At a festival, dancing in the audience, up on stage a full-styler and full-blooded entertainer in a sweaty tailored suit with the best band in the world behind him? On the radio, when Nena suddenly sounded damn cool after reggae and German pop music? Or back in the nineties at some hip hop jam between Mainz and Itzehoe, when a tiny group of people with conviction laid the foundations for what German pop culture is today?

Somehow, somewhere, at some point it must have been. Virtually everyone who hasn't lived under a rock in the last 30 years or so and appreciates a good beat has their own personal Jan moment. Whether you're an old 68er or a 187er. Rap nerd or Rabe Socke fan. Old school, Gen-Z or whatever. No one has shaped music in this country like Jan Delay. And no one has developed himself so constantly, so consistently, from album to album, from era to era, from flash to flash. Five solo records. Four live albums. Three style-defining bands. And countless shows, from youth centers to Rock im Park. Forever Jan? At least time for a little celebratory look back.

Jan Delay's best-of "FOREVER JAN (25 years Jan Delay)" was released in May 2024. It includes his greatest hits and two completely new songs. There is also a collection of legendary side projects and rarities (a point of honor for someone who has always digested beneath the surface and whose second song ever was an ode to the B-side) as well as the best moments of his lockdown initiative Diskoteque. When the Kinginseimding invites you to a rave, it's showtime. Whether it's 1999 or 2024.

"FOREVER JAN (25 Jahre Jan Delay)" packs these 25 years into the most comprehensive compilation possible - and, despite all the stylistic diversity, above all makes the common thread of this extraordinary career recognizable in every respect. Jan Delay is an icon of German pop. He has inspired entire generations to listen to their raveheart and consistently do their thing. But above all, he has always remained a fan. Anyone who has shared a dancefloor with Jan at five o'clock in the morning or discussed the latest Soundso record with him, indeed anyone who has experienced him on stage even once, knows what music means to him, how it drives him, how it defines his work. The beats, the bass, the whole shebang: that's Jan Delay's element. And he has always transferred this passion very directly into his own projects.

Whether as a young man he found a refuge in the old soul of roots reggae when the German rap hype became too colorful for him and the mood in the country dark. Whether he gave his original form of dance music to the land of body bangers and movementbertas (and a new career for himself). Whether he translated his personal enthusiasm for great guitar music into his very own version of Rock On & On & On. Or whether he threw together all his influences - rap and reggae, funk and soul, Udo and Dr. Dre, Hamburg and the world - and simply vibed away: Jan Delay took fire and created new fire.