The End of Western Civilization Runs Four Minutes

The world was already doing badly. Wars, famines, a toupéed demagogue steering the most powerful nation on earth into the wall. And then Germany produced Gina-Lisa Lohfink, who has now made a song called "Boulevard," and I need everyone to understand that this is a new category of terrible.

Gina-Lisa is what happens when a tabloid industry decides to manufacture a celebrity through sheer repetition. She became famous on Germany’s Next Top Model—Heidi Klum’s annual parade of nervous young women—before graduating to the celebrity jungle of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and then, somewhat less voluntarily, to a sex tape that made the rounds online several years ago. Her most recent landmark was appearing on a German naked dating show called Adam sucht Eva, in which she arrived as two enormous silicone spheres with a human being attached to them.

"Boulevard" is not her first attempt at a music career. Previous efforts—Alles Klar, a cover of Barbie Girl, something called Tarzan & Jane—crashed without leaving a mark. None of it stopped her. The press release for this new one claims she is coquettishly playing with her public image and the skewed perception the world has of her. I’d have preferred she found a park bench somewhere and watched the pigeons in silence. The world has enough.