In the very first Spotlight Song episode, Liz explains to Jacqui why David Hasselhoff is big in Germany. Hint: He may have helped end the Cold War, and the CIA didn't even have to write his hit single.
This episode, we’re doing a deep dive on a song that means a lot to Germans who remember the heady days of reunification in 1989. If you want to do your own exploration of the earworm that may* have ended the Cold War, check out:
Special thanks to Aaron P for listening and giving feedback. Much appreciated.
* It absolutely did not.
Liz Walker
Hi, I'm Liz Walker,
Jacqui Clydesdale
And I'm Jacqui Clydesdale.
Liz Walker
And you're listening to Choral Fixation, where we explore why people love singing.
Jacqui Clydesdale
And how we can get the non singers to join in.
Liz Walker
Before we get to today's very special episode we want to tell you a little bit about another episode that's in the works right now.
Jacqui Clydesdale
So in the past few months we've seen a lot of people hit the streets to protest everything from police brutality to COVID restrictions and seeing as we're recording this now at the beginning of November, there may be plenty more protests to come.
Liz Walker
We started talking about the role of group singing at these protests— especially, we were looking at the Black Lives Matter movement. We're thinking about how it fits into or doesn't fit into protest traditions that we've seen in the civil rights movement in the 20th century, thinking back to the 60s specifically.
Jacqui Clydesdale
So we did a bit of research and we talked to some really smart, really inspiring and interesting people who are working right now to make music, a part of social justice work in these protests. And so we have some really great things to share with you, but right now, that episode is taking a little while to put together so in the meantime, Liz had a great idea.
Liz Walker
Well, we decided that we were going to go ahead and do a little something that we've been talking about doing which was a spotlight song where we would talk about a song and talk about the history of it and maybe the writers, the creators and how it got sung to sort of pull apart some of the ideas about why people love singing, and why they love these songs so much and what they mean to people.
Jacqui Clydesdale
So I hope you enjoy this discussion of our very first spotlight song, and watch for our protest singing episode coming soon.
Liz Walker
Okay, no further ado, I'm going to tell you about the most unlikely song, coming from the most unlikely singer.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay, because you and I have been talking about. We've been talking about revolutions. We've been talking about protest singing over the past couple of months. We've been talking about the civil rights struggle. We've been talking about the modern day Black Lives Matter movement. We've been talking about the traditions, the...
Liz Walker
The inherent dignity...
Jacqui Clydesdale
That's right.
Liz Walker
when people raise their voices in song.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Sure. Yeah.
Liz Walker
Right.
Jacqui Clydesdale
But now you're gonna tell me a different story, because [laughter] I understand this has something to do with David Hasselhoff?
Liz Walker
Exactly. He's as surprised as anybody.
Jacqui Clydesdale
[laughter] Okay.
Liz Walker
Okay. Picture it: 1989.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay, 1989. Sure.
Liz Walker
This is the, this is, like, the dummy’s guide to 1989.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay.
Liz Walker
Okay, so in the spring Poland's Solidarity movement chucks out the USSR.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Right. Lech Walesa and all those guys. Yeah,
Liz Walker
That's right. Hungary, in June, tells Soviet troops to get the hell out of our country.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Liz Walker
Like, just a few weeks away the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia is comin’. Later, later in the winter there's going to be the violent overthrow of Romania's dictator Ceausescu.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh that’s right.
Liz Walker
So, like, there are protests. There are rumblings. Like, Europe is on fire right now.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Mm hmm.
Liz Walker
In other news, in China, Tiananmen Square just happened.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh, that’s right.
Liz Walker
Novelist Salman Rushdie is hiding under a rock, because he wrote a novel. Tim Burton's Batman is the summer blockbuster movie. Basically, Jacqui, everything is mental.
Jacqui Clydesdale
[laughter] Yes. Cats living with dogs. Sure.
Liz Walker
Berlin pop radio is heard across Eastern Europe.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Right.
Liz Walker
So, Europe is kind of a funny place when it comes to pop culture. You told me to watch Eurovision.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yes, the Eurovision movie with, uh...
Liz Walker
Song of Song of Ice and Fire.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah.
Liz Walker
I was thinking about how, like, like, we call them novelty songs in North America, but it's not really a novelty if it's something that you cultivate. It's more of a cultural thing.
Jacqui Clydesdale
[laughter] Wow, you're making some bold claims here.
Liz Walker
I know!
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah.
Liz Walker
I don't know anything about art theory but I just think that...
Jacqui Clydesdale
From a cultural studies perspective, this is, uh. Yeah. Okay.
Liz Walker
Well, yes, I think that there is a thirst in Europe for dumb, goofy songs that give you feels.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay!
Liz Walker
Give you feels despite yourself.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay.
Liz Walker
So enter into this miasma: [laughter] David Hasselhoff.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Ooh.
Liz Walker
Star of Knight Rider. TV show about a guy who fights crime with a talking car.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh my god and it's so boring. Like I tried to, I tried to rewatch it, [laughter] because, like, we were starved for entertainment in the 80s, okay? Apart from WKRP, there really wasn't very much good on TV.
Liz Walker
No.
Jacqui Clydesdale
And a few years ago, in a little nostalgia kick some friends and I were like let's see what Knight Rider was like. Unwatchable. UN-
Liz Walker
Unwatchable.
Jacqui Clydesdale
WATCHABLE. We were like we're ready to MST3K it and laugh the whole time. Doesn't matter, we got two thirds of the way through the episode and we're like this is slow as cold molasses going up a hill. It was... awful.
Liz Walker
Well that's because you're a decadent Westerner,
Jacqui Clydesdale
Fair enough. Fair. That is fair.
Liz Walker
Who can’t appreciate, who can’t appreciate Hasselhoff. You know, many have not really appreciated Hasselhoff...
Jacqui Clydesdale
In his time. Yeah.
Liz Walker
At any time. [laughter]
Jacqui Clydesdale
Don’t speak for future generations, Walker, okay. You think you know so much.
Liz Walker
[laughter] Well, so the thing is is that he was riding a high, you know he was, he was... He recorded a record.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay.
Liz Walker
He put on his sunglasses. And he walked into a recording studio and said, I can do that. Because there's no fame he doesn't crave.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Fair enough.
Liz Walker
So, 1985...
Jacqui Clydesdale
Who are we to judge?
Liz Walker
The debut of “Night Rocker.”
Jacqui Clydesdale
The song is named “Knight Rocker?”
Liz Walker
Knight Rocker’s the record. Knight Rocker’s the record. I did a lot of research on this, and there's one mystery that is never explained, and that is why it becomes a big hit nowhere in the world but Austria.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Is this song recorded in English or German? Or some combination of the two?
Liz Walker
Oh yeah, no, you're a jump away ahead of me, it's in English. It's in English. [laughter] Austria just loves a guy in a leather jackets singing in English. Like no no one really knows why and this is why it's a mystery you're like, you're trying to you're I see what you're doing Jacqui you're trying to like, maybe. What was he already working in the in the German video, and you're like, No, no, he wasn't. There's no reason why Austria decided Hasselhoff was the shit, but they did.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Fair enough.
Liz Walker
So he actually he winds up going to lunch with an Austrian fan who wins a contest. That was only held in Austria, to have lunch to win lunch with David Hasselhoff, she tells him. 'You are huge in Austria'. And he says, 'Where's Austria?'
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh dang, that's, that's amazing
Liz Walker
Knight Rider is cancelled in 1986.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh, so let's pause for a moment and pour one out for Knight Rider.
Liz Walker
At some point in like the mid to late 80s David Hasselhoff decides that it's time to make another record--a follow up, if you will--to Knight Rocker, and he remembers that he is really big in Austria so he decides to go to Germany, which is close enough. And that brings us to 1989's Looking For Freedom record.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Sorry, can we place Baywatch on this timeline? When does he get Baywatch?
Liz Walker
Oh, Baywatch is years away.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Is it? Okay. Sorry. David Hasselhoff's career is not something I've kept my finger on the pulse of.
Liz Walker
He has put the sunglasses on, he's hopped in the car and he's driving to West Berlin, because he's going to make a record with a German record producer. It's a follow up to Knight Rocker. He has hooked up with a big time record producer Horst Nusbaum former football player, now goes by the name Jack White, so that English agents can talk to him.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Sure.
Liz Walker
And he is a record producer with a gift for the soft underbelly of feelings. He's worked with Paul Anka and Barry Manilow and Pia Zadora and Jermaine Jackson,
Jacqui Clydesdale
Our forefathers in the soft rock classic genre.
Liz Walker
And Canada's Anne Murray.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Speaking of working in particular idioms. Yes.
Liz Walker
And, and this is, this is a model that is going on, there's a model that he follows and he made Laura Branigan a big star.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah! [sings] Gloria!
Liz Walker
Gloria was an Italian hit from the 70s. it got repackage by Jack White with--
Jacqui Clydesdale
Horst Nusbaum
Liz Walker
He repackages a song with a sexy English speaking star, it's in English, she's attractive, and they have a huge worldwide hit. Hasselhoff wants that.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Sure. He wants he wants a piece of that Gloria money.
Liz Walker
He does yeah. He and Jack White they go into Hansa Studios in Berlin and they make some magic, and Hasselhoff and Jack White are working on this record. They're, they're looking at a song that White wrote back in the 70s. It was a big hit in Germany. It was called Aud der strasse nach suden: On the road to the south.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh, okay. All right.
Liz Walker
It was a big hit. Jack gets it translated, they give it a new name and they they use the same keyboards because the keyboards are still good. And they, they, they call it, Looking for Freedom. It comes out June, 1989 and it is an immediate smash hit. Would you like to hear it?
Jacqui Clydesdale
Would I?
Liz Walker
Okay I want you to open up that first link that I sent you.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay. Let me just...Looking for Freedom. [Song plays] I can listen to the rest of it at my leisure but the video--David, the video is David Hasselhoff singing, "He's been looking for freedom, He's been looking so long" and but it's cut with shots from Knight Rider. Like it's the Knight Rider car escaping from a tractor trailer and flying over other cars. It's, it's amazing.
Liz Walker
Right but it has nothing to do with
Jacqui Clydesdale
Revolution?
Liz Walker
Or the fall of the Iron Curtain or anything like that. It's really... the video suggests nothing of its eventual meaning and significance to millions of people.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Well no for the first 44 seconds that I've watched, it suggests that David Hasselhoff is singing in the voice of the car itself. That the car is searching for freedom, and it needs to escape the confines of this tractor trailer it's been stuck in, and then it busts out and like flies over things in an old school, like Evil Knievel kind of way.
Liz Walker
I think you got it.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yep yeah okay for our younger listeners Evil Knievel was a motorcycle trick rider who would like, you know, build a ramp and then like drive very fast and fly over 25 years Yeah exactly.
Liz Walker
So, I mean, so far this is like this is not even like a sneering mention in Rolling Stone's Hot Issue, like nothing.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Certainly you and I were alive and listening to popular music in 1988-89, we did not hear anything of this.
Liz Walker
Nope. We weren't teenagers in Berlin and, and that sweaty summer every time some German youth turned on the radio.
Jacqui Clydesdale
This is what they heard. Okay.
Liz Walker
okay, this is what's playing--
Jacqui Clydesdale
In East Berlin? as well as--
Liz Walker
West Berlin and they would not have heard it in East Berlin
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay, okay, so it wasn't on American Forces Radio.
Liz Walker
No, probably not.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay, so it's on WBER ooh, which would be the perfect call letters for West Berlin radio. So where are we? We're in 88, teenagers are--
Liz Walker
This is 1989.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Alright 1989. Summer 89
Liz Walker
The big summer This is the big summer song, everything's going crazy around the world, and the Germans can't get enough of David Hasselhoff's Looking for Freedom.
Jacqui Clydesdale
So what next what happens next? What's going on?
Liz Walker
Okay, well...
Jacqui Clydesdale
So does this help fuel the flames of?
Liz Walker
To provide a little context, I've got I've got some thoughts from Der Spiegel cultural writer Hannah Pilarcik. She says, I think Germans rather liked the Americanness about him. And she says, "His music is very simple. And it's something to clap along to".
Jacqui Clydesdale
Sure.
Liz Walker
"Germans like to clap along to very straightforward rhythms."
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah, that makes sense. That story checks out. Yeah, who doesn't?
Liz Walker
I think Hannah is a bit of a wet blanket, frankly,
Jacqui Clydesdale
She's underplaying the joy that is pure Hoff?
Liz Walker
She's closed herself off from the joy that is possible because Hannah, the winds of change are blowing already. People are happily clapping their hands. And this autumn, the autumn of 1989, Germany is swept up in its own revolution.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Mm hm.
Liz Walker
People are out in the streets and Jacqui they're looking for freedom.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yes. Yeah, they are. They're, they want to tear down that wall, Mr. Gorbachev.
Liz Walker
Well and November 9, kind of by accident, West German police let East Germans through the Wall. And then the next thing you know, East Germans, West Germans they're climbing the wall, they're sitting on it, chipping off souvenirs and waltzing back and forth, they're wondering what's been going on for the past 28 years.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah.
Liz Walker
These are people who speak the same language but they're like strangers really.
Jacqui Clydesdale
That's right, yeah. Families divided, the whole thing.
Liz Walker
And it's a really, I guess, really sexy time. It's really like everyone's just like, who knows what's gonna happen? This is bonkers.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Mmm hmm.
Liz Walker
So, you fast forward to New Year's Eve. The end of 1989, the end of the 80s, the end of the Cold War, the end of East Germany, is kind of what everyone is thinking, right. New decade, new you., new look.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Life has given Eastern Europe hassles and now they're ready to make Hasselhoffs.
Liz Walker
So there's a huge televised celebration for, to mark New Year's Eve, and it's at the Brandenburg Gate.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay.
Liz Walker
And Hasselhoff is there to rock the crowd. There was a million people,
Jacqui Clydesdale
Wow
Liz Walker
at the gate. And there are millions more watching at home. They're watching him sing his summer hit. Now I want you to to check out the next video I sent you because this time Hoff has been briefed.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay, so then it looks like what they're showing is the actual concert from New Year's Eve?
Liz Walker
Mmm hmm New Year's Eve 1989.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay. All right, so here we go. Wow.
Liz Walker
He holds it.
Jacqui Clydesdale
He sure does. That bandana. Right. Oh, my God. Can I please describe what he's wearing.
Liz Walker
Yes!
Jacqui Clydesdale
OMG. Okay, so he starts with his back to the crowd he's wearing a leather jacket with like what I can only describe as a bedazzled leather jacket with in the shape of like, like, a German Eagle.
Liz Walker
Yeah.
Jacqui Clydesdale
From the flag kind of thing,
Liz Walker
It's all lit up.
Jacqui Clydesdale
It's Yeah, and he's wearing like a, like silver Lurex tie band across his forehead. He, as he turns around and he lifts his arms, he's, he's wearing like a tank top but black tank top underneath. He's wearing black jeans, and what appears to be and I don't know if this is really the correct way to describe it, but what appears to be a male chastity belt over his pants? it's like si--it's in the same silver Lurex kind of thing. Like, it looks like he's been diapered with a silver neck tie running between his legs and then like around his waist. It is beyond preposterous. It is amazing.
Liz Walker
It's pretty great and this is what was beamed into millions of German households mesmerizing its people, and he in these moments of this, this sort of nascent nation, he, he imprinted himself upon them.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah, like a mother duck on some ducklings.
Liz Walker
Yes, yes because like the, the keyboard scarf that he's wearing earlier is like iconic,
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay,
Liz Walker
in Germany now
Jacqui Clydesdale
really?
Liz Walker
and the light-up leather jacket.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay, with the, with the bedazzled eagle on the back?
Liz Walker
Yes.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay, so, yeah, and he is loving this like he...
Liz Walker
He's loving it because he is powerful and sexy and he's got all this hair! Germany loves him and America isn't isn't there for him right now, so he is there for Germany.
Jacqui Clydesdale
It's uh it's a big moment.
Liz Walker
It's the biggest
Jacqui Clydesdale
How was this kept from us in the West Elizabeth?
Liz Walker
I do remember what 1989 and 1990 was like, and there, there were all these things happening at a really rapid pace which given,
Jacqui Clydesdale
I do remember.
Liz Walker
that I was a young teenager, I was like wow, Is this what, is this what, is this what life is like? Because, you know,
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah, prepared you for 2020 very much.
Liz Walker
You know like, tumultuous time!
Jacqui Clydesdale
It's true.
Liz Walker
30 years later German opinion is is kind of divided about Hasselhoff Hannah Pilarcik, the Der Spiegel writer, she comes back and she says that, she, this is her take on it, she says: "I think you can compare the situation back in 1989 to a huge party,"
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah
Liz Walker
"where everyone was drunk. You start making out with that guy who was attractive and available but then you forgot about it. But then like years after the party people are still reminding you: Hey, you remember that night that you made out with David Hasselhoff?" On the internet, where truth becomes a fever dream.
Jacqui Clydesdale
It's a good tagline, you should pitch that to the Internet Marketing Commission.
Liz Walker
Google, you can use that. People now claim all sorts of ding ding do about what happened.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Sure.
Liz Walker
The night Hoff drove ole Dixie down...
Jacqui Clydesdale
But there's no, there's no--the CIA wrote I've been searchin' got freedom?
Liz Walker
Yeah, there's no worry.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay gotcha.
Liz Walker
No, I mean, they do imagine that he drove up to Checkpoint Charlie in Kit.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh...
Liz Walker
You know and that they open the gates.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh, God, that would be amazing.
Liz Walker
And it's funny, with Hasslehoff himself, because he would actually go on to even bigger things after this. Like, not just saving a nation from itself but like Baywatch,
Jacqui Clydesdale
Of course,
Liz Walker
became like, an international phenomenon and he was a producer which means I think that he has like royalty money that he could, he could like wallpaper his house with.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Of course.
Liz Walker
But I think this is also kind of like the most meaningful and significant thing that he maybe did because he, he is popping up in Germany's chatroom to remind it about their passionate affair.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Is he always kind of been trying to chase that high?
Liz Walker
I think so, I think so because he, he doesn't realize maybe that Germany has moved on. In fact, he was in, he was in Berlin a couple of years ago and he, like in this weird missing-the-point kind-of-thing he was protesting about how they were taking down a chunk of a wall, because they wanted to build a condo.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay.
Liz Walker
And he was like No, don't let this history go! Keep it up.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah but, the people of Berlin have been...[sings] searching for cheap condos!
Liz Walker
So amazingly there's actually a book called Did David Hasselhoff End the Cold War? which I got from the library. There's something for everyone out there.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay, so first of all: how many pages is it long? And how big was the font type when they just wrote the word 'NO'.
Liz Walker
It's true. You can't say that he...
Jacqui Clydesdale
No you can't say that...
Liz Walker
He provided the soundtrack.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay, fair enough.
Liz Walker
Okay, so the, so the author of Did David Hasselhoff End the Cold War?, Emma Hartley, she attempts to explain what happened with a German compound word.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh I love a good compound word. Okay.
Liz Walker
She says that Hasselhoff, and his hit represents the sehnsucht. I'll say that again for you: sehnsucht. It's the wistful longing.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh, okay, sure,
Liz Walker
Wistful longing for Western culture, for the weird word freedom embodied in a two meter tall leather clad chest hair dude. And more importantly, a very catchy song that every kid in school is singing.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Ahhh, So all of the stuff that we had, and that we took for granted. Those are things that had to be and I don't want to say sold to people but like reinforced for people who had never known that kind of freedom and. Okay, all right, I can kind of see that. Oh, we like this song.
Liz Walker
Look you can dismiss Hasselhoff like some drawstring pants. Or you can climb into the Hot Tub Time Machine. Emma Hartley says that "A pop song is like perfume in the sense that when one encounters it after many years it has the capacity to take you right back to where you were the last time you encountered it.
Jacqui Clydesdale
For sure.
Liz Walker
So like a song and Hoff's song embeds him in the fabric of history as experienced by those who were present for it.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah, and I would be interested, if there are any German listeners right now, particularly those around our age, particularly those who were teenagers at the time. Like I would love to know if, like, it's probably one of those songs that when it comes on they know every single word start to finish and they sing right along with it on the radio, and they and their friends, like, you know, just, you know what I mean? They all come crashing in on the chorus because they're like YEAH this is the song that means something to me even if it is...I don't know...you and i, you and i get together at karaoke and do a bitchin number on you know Buffalo Stance by Neneh Cherry and what does that really have to say about how we connect with each other, does it? It's just we connect because we do.
Liz Walker
I think you're ready to click on link number three
Jacqui Clydesdale
I think I am. Is it Buffalo Stance?
Liz Walker
What you've got here is a 2018 concert.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay. 2018? Oh Okay
Liz Walker
2018.
Jacqui Clydesdale
David Hasselhoff and Andre Rieu??
Liz Walker
There's a lot of complex stuff going on here.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh!...Nice. So the Knight Rider car is on its way in. Andre Rieu is directing...at the...is? Oh boy, oh dear.
Liz Walker
Can you see him?
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh I see him. Hasselhoff is wearing...
Liz Walker
Hasselhoff in white tie.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh! The reaction shots!
Liz Walker
Aren't they precious? Okay. No, no, you watch for a while. There's a lot.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Oh Wow. Oh, okay. So, all of those people are approximately our age, and they are losing their minds.
Liz Walker
They are like hooting with laughter at the same time that they are singing along,
Jacqui Clydesdale
That's right,
Liz Walker
and just weirdly, I don't know if you see the, the orchestra but they're all...
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah they're all wearing ball gowns.
Liz Walker
Pastel gowns. Yeah, super weird
Jacqui Clydesdale
It is very odd. Oh yeah, they all come crashing in the chorus.
Liz Walker
Yeah.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Okay, so here's one of the things I want to say about this though is hang on let me just pause it. Okay, so first of all Andre Rieu definitely knows the song and is like, just belting it out on the chorus. To the crowd itself actually still seems reasonably subdued and there's just like pockets of people going bonkers? So I feel like, like there are people in the audience who are maybe like the classical music type or like, Oh what's this is this, is this what the teenagers were listening to 30 years ago? People are really, really, really loving it. It's really cute. And they're so happy. And like you said all of the all of the women in the orchestra, are dressed like Disney Princesses in like what appears to be cotton candy dresses.
Liz Walker
Big gauzy gowns.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Big gauzy gowns, yeah. It's very odd, and they're really happy, and they're like, joining in and like you said they stopped playing in order to like sing along. Yeah, this this song means a lot to people. We ask ourselves, why do people love joining in? Clearly they want to join in and experience some freedom.
Liz Walker
Well, I mean, what the thing that Emma Hartley says is that Germans are a bit protective of their tender feelings toward the Hoff and I really saw that in this video. Because they're, they're laughing but they're not laughing at him, they're laughing at themselves. They're laughing with themselves.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Right.
Liz Walker
Like, they are they're experiencing so much complex joy, I can't even like pull the pieces apart.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah, okay, I can see that. Where you're given that pass to be loud and obnoxious and relive that moment when you were 15 and freedom was sweeping Europe. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, we don't have anything like that. This has been great. Thank you for telling me about the Hoffer.
Liz Walker
I would suggest that listeners go and check out those videos,
Jacqui Clydesdale
It's so worth it. We will post them in the show notes.
Liz Walker
Yes, especially the Maastricht concert from 2018, where you, it's just, it's so bonkers. And everyone is middle aged, and everybody is just singing at the top of their lungs.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yes. Yeah, it is. It's, it's a pure, it's a very pure thing.
Liz Walker
It's come very far from that Kit video,
Jacqui Clydesdale
It's very complicated
Liz Walker
but he brings Kit with him so don't worry.
Jacqui Clydesdale
He does, that's right, he drives in, in Kit. "Michael ignite joy in Germans."
Liz Walker
Well there we are, I think we're done.
Jacqui Clydesdale
So good. So we're on Spotify and we're on Apple podcasts and we're on whatever the Google thing is. I don't understand where people get their Google podcasts anymore.
Liz Walker
Yeah, they beam it directly into your brain now.
Jacqui Clydesdale
Yeah, I guess so. Exactly, Google's got that kind of reach. So yes, like and subscribe and leave us a review and tell us what you'd like. And if you don't like it, feel free, not to.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai