matt’s music blog

I like Rammstein a lot, and there’ll probably me more tracks by them here eventually, but Zwitter is one of my favorites right off the top of my head.

Things start off nicely – guitar riff phased back, nice blippy little techno beat, serious rock drums, and then the same riff, this time front-and-center. “Zwitter, zwitter!” You get the idea.

Next, the first verse, over a momentarily placid version of the guitar, moved back to the back burner as a bassline. The guitar comes back during the second half of the verse, building back up the chorus, which we’ve already become familiar with.

The second verse features another higher synth line, which helps keep things fresh, while the lyrics grind onwards – but we’re coming to the best part of the song. It’s the transition that first happens at 1:47 – bam, we jump up to the bridge, higher vocals, a neat phased effect, and an overall epic ‘peak’.

Things drop back down, of course, for another verse, and then another chorus. There isn’t much more to the song musically.

However, there’s some interesting lyrics to be examined, in particular, the bridge. The song’s title and chorus line, ‘zwitter’ means ‘hermaphrodie’ in German, and here’s the bridge and (supposed) translation:

 

Eins für mich (One for me)
Eins für dich (One for you)
Gibt es nicht (Is there not one or ‘is not how it is‘)
Für mich (For me)

Eins für mich (One for me)
Eins für dich (One for you)
Eins und eins (One and one)
Das bin ich (That’s me)

I love how the words fit together in german – ‘me’ and ‘you’ rhyme, and a few other phonetic similarities (‘für’ and ‘for’, ‘mich’ and ‘me’, ‘es’ and ‘is’, ‘ich’ and ‘I’) make it almost possible to understand the words if you know the context.

And of course there’s the (roughly translated) line:

I am not even downhearted then
When one tells me “fuck yourself”