All Children of This Earth

I didn’t know Bruce Berger until I read about this song. German pop music doesn’t typically reach me—there’s usually something about the earnestness that puts distance between us. But looking into Alle Kinder dieser Erde, I found out he’s made a completely straightforward global anthem about protecting the planet and the kids on it, about corruption and hatred and environmental collapse. No clever angles, no irony buffer. He’s just trying.

The whole global anthem thing was basically Michael Jackson’s last actual territory before he became impossible, and since then most artists either abandoned the idea or buried it under so much irony you can’t tell if they mean it. Berger’s not doing that. He’s saying what he means. He’ll probably fail to some extent—you kind of have to when you aim at something that vast—but at least it’s a failure that matters, an attempt at something true instead of something safe. I haven’t heard the full song, so I can’t tell you if it works. But I know the impulse, and I respect it. I’d rather be around someone trying to reach people with something they actually believe in than someone performing their cynicism.