The Song That Breaks Out of Me Without Warning

It comes at the worst moments—on the subway, in a supermarket, half-asleep in the dark—and there’s nothing I can do about it. Ein bisschen Spaß muss sein, out it comes, full volume, no shame. Dann ist die Welt voll Sonnenschein. And then I feel briefly, ridiculously moved, because it really is that good.

Roberto Blanco has been doing this to me for years, maybe decades. The German-Tunisian entertainer recorded his signature hit in 1984 and it simply never stopped—into supermarket speakers, into TV variety shows, into the heads of people like me who have no particular business loving German schlager but love it anyway. "A Little Fun Must Be" isn’t an ironic pleasure. It’s genuine. Something in that melody is embarrassingly correct about how a good day feels.

By 2014 he was 77 and reportedly deep in financial trouble—six figures owed in alimony to his ex-wife Mireille, according to Spiegel. The options in that situation are hide or perform. He chose performance, recording a hip-hop remix of his own classic that retitled it "Ein bisschen Spar’n muss sein"—a little saving must be. It’s a pun that only fully lands in German but the energy is universal: a 77-year-old man rapping over his own masterpiece and somehow pulling it off with more dignity than the concept deserves.

There’s something I respect about that. Not the deal itself—that’s just survival—but the refusal to treat the song as a relic. He’s still inside it. Still means it. You can’t fake that, no matter how many times the chorus has played.