At its core, Popstar shares many of the traits that make the rest of The Lonely Island's work shine. There's a key understanding of the source material, as all three members have been in Hollywood and music long enough to intimately get the ins and outs of the pop industry they're poking fun at in this mockumentary. As pop icon Conner4Real, Samberg carries the healthy balance of charm and idiocy that has defined his best characters, from SNL up to Brooklyn Nine-Nine 's Jake Peralta. He's completely believable as a chart-topping icon and equally believable when he complains that 10 seconds is "a third of the way to Mars" before his manager Harry (played by comedy stalwart Tim Meadows) reminds him that Jared Leto's band name is not a scientific measurement.
Still, what earned the film its cult following (after the fact, as the film only made $9 million against a $20 million budget upon release) is how zeroed in Popstar is on poking fun at the pop music machine. On a surface level, Popstar 's targets are very much a product of the mid-2010s era it came out in. The movie's title and general focus can be drawn directly back to Justin Bieber's 2011 documentary/vanity project Never Say Never , and since no other solo male pop star was bigger at the time, the line between Bieber and Conner is pretty clear, with some N*SYNC/Justin Timberlake thrown in to round out Conner's previous group, Style Boyz. There are jokes directed at EDM and masked DJs like Marshmello, frequent bits mirroring TMZ's television show, and the movie's prank-minded, foul-mouthed antagonist Hunter The Hungry (pre- SNL Chris Redd's first film role) is almost too plainly Tyler, The Creator during his peak shock-rap era.
But what really stands out when rewatching Popstar is how many of the jokes and exaggerations about the music not only still hold true, but also hew pretty close to how things actually work now. Conner's disastrous partnership to have his music played out of home appliances made by fictional company Aquaspin is clearly a riff on 2014's U2 iPhone debacle, but it's less weird when more and more contemporary artists like Chance the Rapper and Dolly Parton rewrite their songs to promote snack food or startups during the Super Bowl, or slap their names on McDonald's meals a la Travis Scott. Conner's break as a solo artist came off a guest spot known as the "catchphrase verse," a verse made entirely out of catchphrases ("Costco samples like a motherfucker" is a standout). It's a silly idea, but as of this writing, there are multiple songs sitting near the top of the Billboard Hot 100 because a single line became a meme on TikTok, including Masked Wolf's "Astronaut In The Ocean," Doja Cat's "Kiss Me More" and the resurgence of Dua Lipa's 2020 hit "Levitating." For the purpose of going viral today, a catchphrase is practically all an artist needs.
Even the triumphant return of the Style Boyz—while heartwarming as a character moment for Conner—is rooted in the music industry's current trend of farming the nostalgia of millennials for profit. Corporate excess, songwriting manufactured for algorithms, and the inability to hold anything sacred are by no means new phenomena, but the ability of The Lonely Island to pinpoint the specific vectors of each and tease them out into jokes that were funny at the time and even funnier now is a demonstration of the strength of Popstar 's writing.
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping was not fully appreciated upon its release. But with such strong comedic writing, music, and a sense of where the culture was (and is) moving from Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer, it stands out as a highlight of 2010s comedy. There's no telling what type of music Conner4Real would be making in 2021, but it's guaranteed he'd still be a star.
Gabriel Aikins is a Michigan-based freelance writer with a focus on pop music and movies. His work has appeared in i-D , MTV , FLOOD and Paste . He loves good pop songs, good root beer, and good dogs.
VINCINT On New Album, Queer Joy & Pop Music Binary
Jam City on His Journey From Experimental Electronic Music to Producing Olivia Rodrigo | Pitchfork
Under the name Jam City , Jack Latham cut his teeth in the early 2010s with two albums of conceptual electronic music that reshaped empty space into an adrenaline rush. Over the past few years, however, Latham's skill behind the boards has allowed him to embark on an increasingly itinerant career path. From executive producing Kelela's icy R&B masterpiece Take Me Apart to working on Olivia Rodrigo's newly minted No. 1 debut , his growing CV has become a who's-who of ascendant icons. But to hear Latham tell it, the shift from heady club music to building a Top 10 hit for the most talked-about pop album of the year so far is simply a way of connecting more deeply with other artists. "Doing session work and writing with other people is about getting to know the other person in the room," he explains over a video call from his studio in London, where an armada of keyboards sits just out of view. "It's establishing trust and allowing each other to feel vulnerable and go to those emotional places that they need to in order to make great, resonating music."
On his 2012 debut Classical Curves , Jam City introduced a minimalist electronic tableau in which the sound of shattering glass and barking dogs fit comfortably alongside glowering synths and kick drums. The album became a paradigm for Night Slugs, the UK dance label that merged percussive elements of club, grime, and hip-hop into one sleek package. Latham's production style quickly caught the attention of different singers, who layered their vocals over his instrumentals and forever altered his perspective on producing and collaboration. "It was a point of no return," Latham says with a laugh. "Suddenly, you hear how someone interprets your music, and it's completely unexpected and takes you in a new direction. It's my favorite thing about making music now."
Here, Latham discusses his approach in the studio, being inspired by the Brill Building production behind '60s girl groups, and bringing his own "weird" sensibility to chart-toppers.
Jack Latham: Dan and I worked together on the Kelela album and have been friends for years. Normally, he'll send me a demo and say something like "make it weirder," which is perfect for me. He sent me a bunch of tracks for [ SOUR ] in September of last year, so everything had been written, but Dan was looking for a few little bits and pieces. Olivia definitely has an edge to her, and we spoke about how it wasn't a case of doing some cool drums or whatever—there's a little bit of abrasiveness in there, a little bit of distortion that captures some of the anger and feelings of jealousy and bitterness in the songwriting.
I interpret it as just a little bit harder but not too much and not being judgmental. I'm on my own as well, so if I'm working on something remotely, I have the time and space to throw everything in and the kitchen sink. Nine times out of 10, it'll just be one little part that will make things a little bit more magical.
It's gotten much better over the years. The first time I went to the States and got involved in that whole writing world, [I found] you have to develop a thick skin pretty quickly. But you also have to be sensitive and have your guard down anyway, because the other person in the room is vulnerable, too. I'm still looking for real, honest criticism in the people that I trust. Once I have that, I know that things are moving in a good place or going wherever they need to.
I try to spend as little time at the computer as possible. I'm not a virtuoso at all, but I try to sit down at an instrument with someone first and foremost so it becomes less alienated. At the very foundational level of the songwriting, you're just going off emotional cues—you're completely intertwined from the very first stages of things. You don't get past one line of melody and a couple of chords without knowing if you feel something or not.
I was listening to a lot of the Shangri-Las and other girl groups. Not that Olivia's music sounds like that at all, but they were from an era of pop music when every production choice was tailor-made to the narrative of the song and the songwriting. There's sort of a psychodrama going on with the way the vocals are arranged. That's something that over the years has fallen out of favor, but that inspired me when listening to the Olivia stuff because it was telling a story. Everything that comes in has to be on cue to embellish her words and further the narrative of the song—anything more than that and you're distracting, and anything less and you're not doing justice to the incredible songwriting. I think about that more and more, how production is not just a case of musical problem solving or EQ or compression or taking parts out, but it's a filmic thing. You're soundtracking their voice and their narrative and aiding that. I feel like production should be invisible sometimes and you shouldn't notice it in that sense, because you're just carried by the music itself.
Rina Sawayama Is Turning Pop Inside Out: Pride 2021 Cover | Billboard
Styling by Jordan Kelsey. Hair by Tomomi Roppongi at Saint Luke Artists. Makeup by Ana Takahashi. Manicure by Lauren Michelle Pires. On-site production by Joel Gilgallon at JOON.
Andrea Brocca top and shoes, Wolford bottoms, FALKE tights, Harris Reed headpiece, Mugler earrings and bracelets, Pebble London rings.
With her genre-obliterating sound and gripping lyrics about identity, Rina Sawayama became one of the most exciting queer voices in pop. Now she's making room for anyone else who feels like an outsider.
A few years ago, Rina Sawayama was starting to wonder if she was unsignable. There was the casual racism, like the time she found out that a senior record executive jokingly referred to her as "Rina Wagamama" behind her back. Or that time a major-label A&R executive backed out of a deal at the last minute, leaving her scrambling to cover lawyer's fees she had planned to pay for with her advance.
Her infraction? The demo for "STFU!," a thrashing, nu metal romp that sounds like the reincarnation of Limp Bizkit if Fred Durst were JoJo. The song's chorus — "Shut the f--k up," intoned over and over again in a feathery singsong — was both absurd and intimate, aimed at the very sort of person in the industry who thought replacing Sawayama's name with that of a Japanese-inspired British restaurant chain was funny. From the label's perspective, though, "STFU!" was too stark a departure from the R&B-inflected minimalism of RINA , her 2017 EP. She remembers feeling "devastated" when the deal fell through, looking around the Los Angeles studio she was renting for the month and wondering how she was going to afford it. But at no point did she ever question her vision.
"I was like, ' F--k off ,' " Sawayama, dressed casually in a gray hoodie, says over Zoom from her London flat on a recent afternoon, her laughter revealing a sliver of blue braces. The Japanese-British singer, 30, had spent her 20s toiling independently in London's underground music scene, playing small clubs and fine-tuning what would become her boundary-pushing approach to pop. So by the time she started pursuing a record deal, she knew she was on to something: "I think that's the benefit of me waiting so long. Had I been younger, I might have been like, 'Oh, no. I need to change my sound.' "
Then she took a meeting with British independent label Dirty Hit. Founder Jamie Oborne had a different reaction to "STFU!": He couldn't stop laughing. "It was bonkers," says Oborne. "It was such a collision of different cultural elements, of genres." He also knew a thing or two about developing misunderstood acts. When he launched Dirty Hit in 2009, his first band was pop-rock powerhouse The 1975, which "every label in the f--king world seemed to pass on twice," he says. Sawayama signed to the company in 2019 — and became the pop-star outlier among a rock-leaning roster that now includes Pale Waves, Wolf Alice and Beabadoobee.
"I often say there are two types of artists: artists that have to do it and artists that want to do it, and Rina is the former," adds Oborne. "She can't be anything else other than Rina Sawayama."
"STFU!" became the lead single from 2020's Sawayama , her debut album and one of the most critically lauded releases of the year. (It appeared prominently on over two dozen best-of lists last year.) It felt like the foundation for a new kind of pop star: unabashedly queer, unapologetically Asian and completely unconcerned with genre conventions. Sawayama's identities don't just inspire her music — they permeate its DNA. On "Chosen Family," a shimmering, gospel-tinged ballad, she sings about finding solace in queer friendships, especially in the face of rejection from loved ones. On futuristic tracks like "Tokyo Love Hotel" and "Akasaka Sad," she explores her relationship with Japan as a U.K. transplant — her family emigrated from Niigata when she was 5 years old — who feels both protective of and disconnected from her culture.
Zedd and JoJo Are Collaborating on New Music - EDM.com - The Latest Electronic Dance Music News,
If you somehow had a song by Zedd and JoJo on your 2021 bingo card, congratulations are in order after the two teased a collaborative track in the works.
After JoJo reached out to Zedd to let him know she wants to sing on one of his tracks, the Grammy-winning electronic producer responded no less than a half-hour later with a succinct yet emphatic confirmation. "Let's make it happen," he tweeted.
Perhaps best known for her debut single, the generational pop anthem "Leave (Get Out)," JoJo is responsible for some of the most popular mainstream records of the aughts. After that track entrenched her as the youngest solo artist in history to top the US Billboard Pop chart, she became one of the best-selling artists in the world, releasing two studio albums that went on to be certified Platinum and Gold, respectively.
At the time of this article's publication, neither Zedd nor JoJo have shared any additional details about the song in question.
'It was a big deal to leave the gospel world and to do pop music' - Courtney B Vance | The
Releasing her debut single in 1967 following her signing to Atlantic Records, Franklin proceeded to unveil 73 singles that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 – the US equivalent of the UK Singles Chart.
The first came in the form of Franklin's renowned 1967 Otis Reading cover Respect. The second, a 1987 duet with George Michael entitled I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me).
Written by The United States vs. Billie Holiday screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks, Genius: Aretha stars The Outsider and Mr Selfridge actress Cynthia Erivo as Aretha Franklin, alongside Courtney B Vance as Aretha's father.
"They're not only just the wounds of [the Franklin] family, they're wounds of the black American family, they're wounds of America, they're wounds of the world.
Directed by Emmy Award-winning Anthony Hemingway (Power/American Crime Story), the third installment of National Geographic's eye-opening anthology series was created with the blessing of the Franklin family.
"But I would not have guessed that she had to struggle so much as a little girl, with her mother leaving the house [when she was] 10 years old – the trauma of it.
"When you get to the place where your mother says, 'I'm out', that means you've seen the steps that are taken for her to go, 'I'm out'.
"And that mommy leaves and not daddy; it's just mind-blowing to discover those kinds of things about her childhood and how traumatised she was."
"When he said 'we're going to do a March in Detroit', it drew about 100,000 people. Martin Luther King came and did the preview of his 'I Have a Dream' speech. He did a practice run of it.
K-Pop Reactors Breaking Down BTS' 'Butter' Ups The Fun Factor
"I continue to do a lot of k-pop videos on my channel because k-pop music videos have incredible production value and engagement compared to western music videos," said Orme.
"He was like, 'Bro, you got to check out these guys. It's like a bunch of Michael Jacksons or Justin Biebers, but altogether in one group.' The music videos are absolutely incredible, the dancing, the choreography, the singing, the rapping and simply overall talent. I watched BTS, EXO, and NCT right off the bat, then we started getting into girl groups like Blackpink, Red Velvet, and Twice. We would watch compilations of all the new videos over that summer and the rest is history."
Orme, whose favorite k-pop groups are BTS, NCT, Stray Kids, Blackpink, ITZY, and Everglow, enjoys sharing his enthusiasm on YouTube.
"It's really amazing to watch your favorite artists and groups through the eyes of somebody else," said Orme. "They will see things that you might have missed and teach you how to appreciate the artwork at a deeper level. Everyone loves to learn and be entertained at the same time."
"I could never find a dancer reactor that would truly describe why certain moves fit well, why the dynamics and the rhythm of it all matches the music (or not)," she said. "I guess that's also one of the reasons I decided to do reactions myself."
Jouffray will soon release her own first song and music video. She said that discovering k-pop was like "finding what I've always wanted to do, create and see in front of my eyes. I loved it instantly."
She describes Butter as a "lighthearted and warm song," that can turn a gloomy day bright. "I just love that about it. And of course, from a dancer's point of view, the choreography represents that perfectly and is quite original too."
"This hobby of ours which has blossomed into a full-on obsession started two years ago ironically enough by way of a recommendation from another reactor," said Nico. "BTS caught our attention instantaneously after we watched the music video Mic Drop . The song itself was melodious but what really kept us coming back for more was the seven stars that were ever present in that video."
He reacted to Butter with his brother Adam and friend Blaze. "Both are dancers and music artists," said Nico. "So they are able to bring a level of clarity when we do reaction videos."
How Olivia Rodrigo Became Pop's Brightest New Star | The New Yorker
The producer was right, or nearly right. "Just for a Moment" was a hit, but the show's real breakout song was "All I Want," a solo written and sung by Rodrigo, who delivered the lyrics with a hint of vibrato and a tentative affect—as if, at any moment, she might take it all back. In character as Nini, or maybe not, she sang, quaveringly, "All I want is love that lasts / Is all I want too much to ask?" And then, in January, even that song was overshadowed by "Drivers License," Rodrigo's proper début single, a perfectly crafted howl of romantic resentment that became an immediate blockbuster—one of the most infectious pop songs, surely, that anyone will release all decade. It set streaming records on Spotify, and by the time it appeared atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart, a week and a half after its release, fans had already decided that they knew what it was about. Using clues gleaned from social media, they concluded that Rodrigo and Bassett had been dating, and that "Drivers License" was about how he had left her. "You're probably with that blond girl," Rodrigo sings, bitterly, and listeners imagined that she was referring to the actress and singer Sabrina Carpenter, who is blond, and who seemed to be friendly with Bassett. Like many great breakup songs, this one is both a lament and an indictment. A chiming piano evokes the insistent sound of a car asking its operator to shut the door. Singing for the prosecution, Rodrigo delivers her closing argument: "You said forever, now I drive alone past your street." She is inviting fans to share her fury at the cosmic unfairness of it all, and evidently millions of them do.
The success of "Drivers License" spawned a small musical industry: the next week, Bassett released a spiteful song of his own ("Lie Lie Lie"), and, the week after that, Carpenter released one, too ("Skin"); even as "Drivers License" took over the world, Rodrigo and Bassett were on location together in Utah, shooting the second season of "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series," which had its début a few weeks ago. Perhaps more important, "Drivers License" marked the launch of an impressive musical career: Rodrigo recently turned eighteen, and already she seems like the first major new pop star of this young decade. Her début album, "Sour," is startlingly single-minded, and effectively so: eleven semisweet songs, almost all of them about love gone wrong. (Last week, it spawned another No. 1 hit, "Good 4 U.") In interviews, Rodrigo is strategically coy about the meaning of her lyrics, but when she sings she uses every trick—high, breathless asides; half-shouted choruses; a micro-eruption of mirthless laughter—to assure us that we know exactly what she's talking about.
And maybe I'm just not as interesting as the girls you had before
But god you couldn't have cared less about someone who loved you more
I'd say you broke my heart, but you broke much more than that
Now I don't want your sympathy, I just want myself back.
The joy of a great breakup song is the joy of magnification, of hearing a familiar romantic tragedy blown up to world-historical proportions. The girl in the songs can't believe that her ex-boyfriend is playing Billy Joel for someone new. "I bet you even tell her how you love her, in between the chorus and the verse," she sings, and you can understand her dismay: imagine realizing you had subjected yourself to such a maneuver in vain.
As she mentioned in that special, Rodrigo used to post snippets of songs on Instagram. One of her greatest assets is her ability to create the illusion of intimacy: a cloud of multitracked vocals will disperse, or a buzzing riff will hush, so that we can hear the sound of fingers moving on the fret board, or the sound of Rodrigo's breathing, getting ready for the next indictment. Rodrigo worked with the songwriter and producer Dan Nigro, who previously helped a rookie singer named Conan Gray create one of last year's best début albums. (It was called "Kid Krow," and it was stocked with swooning laments and neat dance tracks.) Together, Rodrigo and Nigro ransack the recent history of emotional pop: one song deftly evokes the fizzy, defiant spirit of Paramore, and several evoke Taylor Swift in her accusatory heyday. Rodrigo's album, much like her television show, cleverly mines short-cycle nostalgia; both seem designed to make relatively young listeners feel absolutely old. She has said that she wrote "Drivers License" after a drive, during which she had been crying and listening to one of her favorite songwriters. That songwriter turned out to be not some ancient hero but Gracie Abrams, a rising star who is only twenty-one, and who has yet to release a début album of her own.
Hyperpop: the newest teen fad or pop music's saviour? | Cherwell
At the same time, a record label that would become closely associated with SOPHIE and the bubblegum bass subgenre was created. PC Music was founded by A.G. Cook in 2015, the same year SOPHIE released her debut compilation album, Product , which had the same emphasis on striking a balance between synthetic, cleanly produced and bouncy dance-pop songs and a darker, more abrasive edge. Both Cook and SOPHIE would go on to produce for Charli XCX, whose 2016 Vroom Vroom EP proved a watershed for the emergent genre, bringing it its first taste of commercial success. So, what brought about this success? The appeal of hyperpop can be boiled down to three main factors: irony, diversity, and overstimulation.
The first and perhaps most important aspect of the genre, the one that separates it from your run of the mill pop music is its sense of irony and self-awareness. This has been present in the genre from the start, with SOPHIE's early work being a good example. The cheery female voice exclaiming ' Latex gloves, smack so hard, PVC, gets me hard ' on the 2015 single ‘HARD’, accompanied by sparkly synth melodies and distorted percussion provides a juxtaposition that'd produce discomfort in any casual listener. But it is this juxtaposition that characterises the genre: bright, happy elements of club hits mixed with a subversive sly irony that comes with introducing darker lyrical and aesthetic elements.
Taking cues largely from the godawful meme genre of nightcore, 100 Gecs, pits simple (or patently nonsensical) lyrics to a myriad of schizophrenic constantly changing beats. This self-awareness at their own ridiculousness is key to their appeal; vocalist Laura Les' pitch-shifted rant at the start of ‘money machine’, compares arms to cigarettes, laments inadequate truck size and uses the term "piss baby " as an insult. On the other hand, some of their lyrics are so plain and earnest that they can't help but evoke pathos. The simple sentiments of Laura Les putting unconditional trust in her lover the aptly titled ’ xXXi_wud_nvrstøp_ÜXXx’ are contrasted with an abrasive, glitchy breakdown right afterwards. In essence, hyperpop recognises pop music's inherently ridiculous nature. It attempts to convey unironic, earnest sentiments while simultaneously being a billion-dollar industry built on the exploitation of artists, which hyperpop takes to the nth degree. A good demonstration of this is ‘It's Okay To Cry’, the opening track from SOPHIE's 2018 album Oil of Every Pearl's Un-insides. A tender ballad about being honest with one's feelings, it boasts glossy and surprisingly typical production, only to be followed by a track about being whipped whilst role-playing as a pony. On any standard pop album, this would be career-ending, but it fits in with hyperpop's rejection of watered-down sentiments in order to maximise commercial appeal. As a result, SOPHIE does not have to make compromises in her subject matter.
“It is more of an idea, a philosophy, that often, but not always, incorporates excessive ammounts of irony…”
100 Gecs also play into another important part of hyperpop's appeal: its diversity. Their 2019 debut 1000 Gecs is 23 minutes long and has 10 songs, but maybe spans twice as many genres. Pop, trap, breakbeat, heavy metal, ska, dubstep, even experimental noise is tackled on the record, with most songs containing two or three sections of totally different genres. Another example of this is the work of hyperpop-adjacents and meme sensations Drain Gang. The output of their three primary members, Bladee, Ecco2k, and Thaiboy Digital was initially distinct. Ecco2k took a softer, poppier direction, while the other two operated within the cloud rap and trap subgenres. More recently, however, their projects have slickly blended together into a detached, melancholy fusion of hip hop, pop, dance music and r&b. Bladee's increased use of singing on tracks like ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ shows this, and Thaiboy's work as superstar alter ego DJ Billybool. Perhaps the most extreme case of diversity is A.G. Cook's album 7G, spanning 49 songs, and ranging from touching guitar ballads to ear-meltingly twitchy drum n bass.
This also raises the question of what is Hyperpop? In short, you can't really say. It spans so many genres, subgenres and styles that there is no definitive hyperpop "sound". Instead, it's more of an idea, a philosophy that often, but not always incorporates excessive amounts of irony and maximalist aesthetics. So, what's the future of the genre? As with any subversive musical movement, its aesthetics will be co-opted by major labels but losing the irony and intellect that made it so distinctive in the first place.
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Kraftwerk And Our Computer World : NPR
UWE SCHUTTE: They're now kind of paraded as the best of Germany. And look how we influenced the entirety of popular music across the globe. There are only two important influential bands in the world of pop music. That's The Beatles and Kraftwerk.
CORNISH: His new book is called "Kraftwerk: Future Music From Germany." And yes, he argues the band helped bring about the rise of hip-hop and electronic dance music, and theirs was an unlikely success. Their U.S. breakthrough was a 22-minute electronic ode to driving called "Autobahn."
KRAFTWERK: (Singing) Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn. Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der Autobahn.
CORNISH: Kraftwerk is now considered a pioneering electronic band, but Schutte says that wasn't quite how things started. In the '70s, they were just experimental artists from Germany's art capital, Dusseldorf.
SCHUTTE: They had this idea to use machines and to work with everyday sounds, you know, with the noises of driving on the motorway, with the noises of car engines, of car horns. So this was electronically simulated, though ultimately, it turned out at the end, they just took some library records. And so they took the sound effects of that. In a sense, Kraftwerk weren't that electronic in the beginning. This was also experimental in the sense of, how do you build a drum kit if there are no such things as a drum kit? You go to the scrapyard, and you buy various other things, knitting needles. And then you try to build something out of these sort of odds and ends of this debris, of this stuff from the scrapyard. You try to build an electronic music machine.
CORNISH: You know, you're writing about the idea of Kraftwerk representing an effort at the kind of rebuilding of Germany in a way, culturally.
CORNISH: And I think you even say, to quote, "a political, cultural and moral rebuilding of Germany."
CORNISH: And they try and define this identity, it sounds like, through art, culture and technology.
SCHUTTE: Technology, art, culture but harking back to a previous age to an age before the Nazis, to the great age of German culture and art and cinema expressionism - the Weimar period, the interwar period. So they have to look back to find German traditions they could associate with, not something that was tainted by Nazism.
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