Liebe Leute,
pit war so überaus inspiriert, fleißig und liebenswürdig, eine englische Übersetzung meines jüngsten Blog-Beitrags anzufertigen und sie mir für die International Section des Forums vorzuschlagen. Ich habe mir die Übersetzung angeschaut und die eine oder andere Stelle nach meinem Gusto modifiziert, und nun möchte ich diejenigen, die über besonders fortgeschrittene Englischkenntnisse verfügen, sehr herzlich bitten, an der Endredaktion des Textes mitzuwirken. Ich würde ihn sehr gerne am Sonntagabend publizieren.
Herzliche Grüße
WS
Success she did not intend at all
by Walter S.
Now that three TV live shows have gone by and Lena's new album 'Good News' conquered from nothing the first position in the charts already having gold-status after one week and the remaining tickets for her upcoming tour through Germany's nine biggest halls are becoming scarce, now it is time to marvel at this strange coincidence of perfect acumen and breathtaking fortune that made a very attractive, very sprightly student with unspecific artistic ambitions an almost established singing artist with a perspective to be a super star within the span of one year. To evaluate how this rapid development differs from the usual casting starlet career we have to take a look back again.
Late in the night of Feburary 2nd 2010, a certain Lena Meyer-Landrut, student of a comprehensive school, 18 years old, almost without any corresponding experiences entered the stage of a TV studio in Köln-Mühlheim, where a TV show was produced that was hardly apt to draw the rapt attention of the audience. The aim of this show in eight episodes could hardly be more dismal: A German contestant for the trashiest and yet the biggest music spectacle in the world, the Eurovision Song Contest, commonly called “Grand Prix“, was to be found. After the embarrassing and the well deserved last places of the years gone by, this prospect didn't promise great reward neither for the audience nor for the candidates; only Stefan Raab's name who had been good for fifth,seventh and eighth place may have comforted a little bit. Accordingly, the show went off innocuously and unspectacularly without any highlight worth mentioning...
...until the above-quoted Lena Meyer-Landrut entered the stage as tenth and last candidate. It can still be reconstructed in respective internet forums to the point of the exact moment when a sheer explosion of consciousness in the then still awake people took place while she performed Adele's „My Same“. The video of this performance, which was provided later on the show's web page, was called up more than 1.6 million times, that is more than ten times more frequently than the most popular show of any other candidate. The jurors left out detailed criticism, they came to the basics instead and were ungrudging in giving superlativistic compliments culminating in the sentence “You have got star appeal, people will love you!“ Unanimously all three of them recommended Lena as favourite.
Lena's stunned reaction confirmed what she later on expessed again and again: She had neither anticipated nor intended such a success; she had not even thought it was possible at all. Not even the participation in this first show was in her mind when she, taken by a sudden whim, applied for Our Star for Oslo in autumn 2009 – originally she intended to order tickets for another Stefan Raab show (tv total). Singing without any company in an artless casting box she simply wanted to hear the opinion of entertainment professionals whether she could sing and was appealing. The flamboyant discrepancy between this movingly simple motivation and the overwhelmed and overwhelming reaction which Lena got is probably most clearly shown in her appearance at the NDR Talk Show of May 7th 2010, the day her debut album „My cassette player“ was released. The videos, which can still be watched in various versions on You Tube, show a party of middle-aged, mediocre professionals who nevertheless have been firmly installed in the German show circus for years. They gently flatter the still-student with enthusiastic felicity as if she was Virgin Mary herself.
This perception remained and reinforced in the course of time. In a never known frequency and constancy the attribute „enamored“ became a ubiquitous description especially of German journalists whenever Lena was meant. (The stubborn malice and unhumorous search for flaws of those people which they currently spread in German media are perhaps an expression of an inhibited sense of shame due to their own enthusiasm of the privious year which they would like to make forgotten - like the honest citizens of Grasse wanted to make forgotten their frenzy of love in which the perfume of Grenouille, the main protagonist of Patrick Süskind's famous novel, transferred them, whom they just a minute ago had wanted to see being smashed under the blows of the hangman.) Lena herself, in fact, remained virtually untouched by all these declarations of love. “Don't believe the hype“, singer and juror Adel Tawil advised her for life; Lena adhered to it. Her seemingly (or may I say: obviously) still intact mind shows that she was well advised. She couldn't care less and does well to do so and this is held against her as arrogance by the formerly fools in love.
Lena wanted to become an artist, now she has become one and she is very successful. This sentence is right and wrong at the same time because something decisive is missing: i.e. the moment of that mad coincidence that made her clicking at the banner ad of Our Star for Oslo at some time in autumn 2009. If she had not done so she would have followed her original plans which were work&travel in Australia, drama school and then let's see what comes up. Our Star for Oslo would have taken place without her, with brave talented candidates, an audience ready to be amused, a winner with the prospect of – well, let's say a ninth place in Oslo, and the whole thing would have lined up in the German amusement business without leaving any bigger traces. Perhaps a new Max Mutzke or Stefanie Heinzmann would have been yielded. And nobody wouldn't have missed anything.
Just imagine...