Marcel Winatschek

Songs From Another World

When the Voice of an Entire Generation Fell Silent

Even today, more or less strangers still ask me by email, letter, and shouting through the open window what happened to AMY&PINK. The portal of good humor. The party ship of Berlin’s newcomers. The voice of a generation that never wanted to grow up, partied for three days in Berghain, and woke up one morning in the ruins of their denial of reality. The reflexive answer to the exceedingly individual question of why AMY&PINK no longer exists is: I don’t know. Maybe things just have to end at some point, before they are artificially kept alive.

At the beginning of the new decade, AMY&PINK was the digital destination for rebels, hipsters, and avant-gardists. We were invited by brands like Sony, Mercedes, and Microsoft to events all over Germany, Europe, and the world. New York, Toronto, and London. Rome, Shenzhen, and Los Angeles. Lisbon, Monaco, and Las Vegas. To get drunk with Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams, and Frank Ocean. All because we wrote weird things on the internet, using swear words all the time, and posted vomiting naked girls and swastikas made of cocaine.

The problem became that I continuously maneuvered AMY&PINK into a spiral of what the fucks, from which I soon couldn’t get the site out. While in the beginning, everything was funny, ironic, and over the top, at some point a completely far-fetched professionalization of the content took hold. On the one hand, we had to be more blatant than everyone else to keep readers interested, on the other hand, advertisers demanded less exposed private parts on the front page. At some point, more and more irrelevant articles took over the front page.

If I were even a touch as cool as I’ve pretended to be in my articles, I should have doused AMY&PINK with gasoline years ago, set it on fire, and let it explode behind me in cinematic slow motion as I walked crazily smiling toward the camera. But I’m not cool. And I can’t let go that easily either. After all, the page views continued to be quite good. But in the end, I put way too much time into saving AMY&PINK that I should have rather invested in important things. Getting a real job. Having children, planting trees, building houses, stuff like that.

So one fine morning I sat down in front of my laptop with a hot coffee and purged the server. And I felt nothing. Nothing at all. It was finally over. Better late than never. I’ve learned a lot from AMY&PINK and the people who even had anything to do with it. But now it’s time to let it rest and start something new. After all, the world out there is huge and the possibilities to find happiness are limitless. You just have to have the courage to let go, to reach out to the unknown and let it lead you to new adventures - before it’s finally too late.

Songs From Another World

Songs From Another World

When I finally got my driver’s license in my early 20s and raced my mother’s bright red Seat Ibiza through the streets of my hometown, crisscrossing back and forth, there was no hip hop, no techno, and no Britney Spears blaring from my speakers. No. It was the then-new single by a Japanese pop musician. Kumi Koda was her name. Butterfly was the song. My girlfriend at the time, sitting huddled in the passenger seat, was ashamed of me as we drove past the local ice cream parlor, the school, and the outdoor pool. With Butterfly at full volume. Of course, it makes absolutely no sense that I listen to Japanese music. I’m, surprise, surprise, not Japanese after all. Wow.

With songs like First Love, Secret Base, and Rewrite, I can rhyme together own stories in my head. Imagine my own personal closing credits. Fantasize my life on the other side of the world. J-pop exudes the same kind of magic you had as a kid, listening to foreign songs on the radio and not yet having to understand what bullshit was being sung about in them. Japanese music is melodic, emotional, and has an intangible power that can otherwise only be experienced by accidentally standing between sweaty weebs armed with two to seven Canon SLR cameras and a sixteen-year-old girl dressed as Rem from Re:Zero at some random anime convention.

Japanese people like Swedish indie bands, American rappers, and British DJs. But J-pop songs are the anthems of my own little screwed up world. The Japanese music industry doesn’t care if I listen to their songs, adore the stars, and watch the music videos. I don’t exist for them. J-pop is a huge personal playlist. Just for me. I can dance to it. Laugh. Cry. I’m fully aware that with the revelation that I love J-pop, I have lost any chance of future sexual intercourse with another human being. Forever. So I sit here, close my eyes, and listen to Perfume, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, and Babymetal. As they confidently sing about sekai, dokidoki, and hanabi. And I’m happy.

The Transience of Written Words

The Transience of Written Words

This blog has changed again and again over the past years. From the small diary of a German media designer to the story collection of creative minds spread all over Germany. From the bible of Berlin nightlife to the tabloid newspaper for hipsters. From a digital news site to a never-sleeping ticker of viral happenings. Until at some point, I was faced with a sheer monstrosity of false expectations and hopeless prospects. This website wanted to be everything but collapsed from not being able to do anything right. For a variety of reasons. I had forgotten what this blog was really about and wanted to stay relevant at all costs in this fast-paced media universe.

With my eyes forward, there was only one choice: Keeping up. Keeping up with the news. Keeping up with the trends. Keeping up with the loud, shiny, and flashing. At some point, I was just blindly churning out news, lookbooks, gossip, YouTube videos, shitstorms, and boobs in a completely irrelevant mix. The blog had filled to bursting point with nonsense and bullshit. By the end, all I wanted was for it to be over. One last night, soaked in cheap wine from the convenience store, I rummaged through the old texts. The ones I had published when blogs were just getting big. When life was still a game. When all seemed right with the world. They were great.

I realized that there was only one way to save my blog. And that was to do the opposite of what I did in the past years. My blog should once again become a peaceful garden amid a jungle full of nonsense. Where everyone has fun, no matter if they want to indulge in the profoundly formulated transience of being or just marvel at a few pretty images about even prettier adventures. Everybody is welcome to look around and take the thoughts and opinions with them that they think are important, right, or amusing. I would be happy if I could continue to accompany you as a reader a little bit on your turbulent life, entertain, and even inspire - doing it my way.