I always wondered whether After the Fire understood what the song was about. They started as a Christian rock band, even if they toned down the Jesus references in their later albums, and they still didn't look like the kind of people who'd be hanging out with the kids snorting coke and partying like Falco. Also, anyone who can say "My street understanding was just enough" with a straight face obviously has no "street understanding".
The Falco song is pretty obviously about coke. But when you take out "Hey, wanna buy some stuff man?" and translate "Ihr' Nas'n spricht dafür" to "I know she told the story" and so on, by the time you get to the part about all the children know because they're slipping on the same snow, it doesn't even come across as a reference to coke anymore. (The fact that they translated "Kind" as "children" instead of "kids" or similar doesn't help, since it makes you think of innocent little boys and girls.)
And in the chorus, instead of a guy trying to pass for sober when he's high as a kite, we get a guy who's cowering in fear for no obvious reason. Maybe the cop is a (at least metaphorical) Nazi (why else would "Der Kommissar" be in German?) and the singer's character is "urban" (all his funky friends are rapping), or maybe he's just a cartoon evil cop. Either way, the whole feeling of the dangerous outlaw thrill mingling with the thrill of coke itself is gone.
Then there's the videos. Falco's makes it even more obvious the song is about young cokeheads partying it up (he even sniffs and thumbs his nose), and trying to talk his way out of an arrest then making a run for it. ATF's looks like a 1970s Hammer attempt at intrigue in Weimar-era Berlin, and Der Kommissar appears to be a femme fatale spy or something, leaving me with even less idea of what their version of the song is supposed to be about.
The question is, were they intentionally gutting the song of it coke references in translating it, or did they just not even recognize them?
And, either way, what is their cover supposed to be about?
I always wondered whether After the Fire understood what the song was about. They started as a Christian rock band, even if they toned down the Jesus references in their later albums, and they still didn't look like the kind of people who'd be hanging out with the kids snorting coke and partying like Falco. Also, anyone who can say "My street understanding was just enough" with a straight face obviously has no "street understanding".
The Falco song is pretty obviously about coke. But when you take out "Hey, wanna buy some stuff man?" and translate "Ihr' Nas'n spricht dafür" to "I know she told the story" and so on, by the time you get to the part about all the children know because they're slipping on the same snow, it doesn't even come across as a reference to coke anymore. (The fact that they translated "Kind" as "children" instead of "kids" or similar doesn't help, since it makes you think of innocent little boys and girls.)
And in the chorus, instead of a guy trying to pass for sober when he's high as a kite, we get a guy who's cowering in fear for no obvious reason. Maybe the cop is a (at least metaphorical) Nazi (why else would "Der Kommissar" be in German?) and the singer's character is "urban" (all his funky friends are rapping), or maybe he's just a cartoon evil cop. Either way, the whole feeling of the dangerous outlaw thrill mingling with the thrill of coke itself is gone.
Then there's the videos. Falco's makes it even more obvious the song is about young cokeheads partying it up (he even sniffs and thumbs his nose), and trying to talk his way out of an arrest then making a run for it. ATF's looks like a 1970s Hammer attempt at intrigue in Weimar-era Berlin, and Der Kommissar appears to be a femme fatale spy or something, leaving me with even less idea of what their version of the song is supposed to be about.
The question is, were they intentionally gutting the song of it coke references in translating it, or did they just not even recognize them?
And, either way, what is their cover supposed to be about?