Polka, Actually

There’s a high school girl from Fulda named Marilena who does that folk-music-variety-show thing—Musikantenstadl—and her new single is called Hey DJ leg a Polka auf. Play a Polka, DJ. The contrast is the joke: here’s someone from the most traditional, wholesome corner of German music entertainment asking a club DJ to abandon techno for polka.

But here’s the thing. Hours of the same four-on-the-floor beat does get monotonous. It’s hypnotic until it isn’t, and then it’s just relentless. I get club culture, the appeal of surrender to a single repeated pattern, but there’s definitely a point where you hit a wall and think: okay, what if this changed. What if there was a melody. What if something had an ending.

Marilena probably made the song just to be funny, existing as she does in a completely different musical universe. But she’s also saying out loud the thing people in clubs sometimes feel but don’t say, because admitting you’re tired of the beat feels like admitting the whole thing isn’t for you. It’s a small permission to think: yeah, this is good, but it’s also kind of relentless.

I’ve never actually heard the track. Don’t know if it’s good or just novelty. But I like that she made it anyway—that she exists far enough outside club culture to not care what the correct opinion is supposed to be.