According to an old rock'n'roll cliché, the third album is the make or break album. It is said that it decides whether a newcomer's career finally realizes its full potential and climbs into the Champions League, or whether it will bob along forever. If the cliché is true, Ansa Sauermann will be a pop star this year.
His previous album, "Trümmerlotte" (2020), was praised to the skies by critics, who spoke, among other things, of an "intoxicatingly beautiful pop album," "packed with hits" and recorded with a "fervor as if his life were at stake."
The album came out at the height of the pandemic, and Ansa, one of the best live acts in the German-speaking world, was - let's be frank - fucked for now. All that is now ticked off. And nice things have happened since then, especially privately. Ansa fell in love and married into a Swiss pop star dynasty of Sicilian origin. Needless to say, such exuberance of emotion is inspiring, and album three reflects this pivotal point in his life. It is his masterpiece. Romantic, poetic and yet fiery as ever. The boisterous power pop of the lead single "Erfolglos" signals that Ansa is still hungry and overflowing with passion and lust for life. Because of his language, Ansa is sometimes easily located in the unsexy German pop corner; but this time more than ever, it should be emphasized to all cynics, this is so much greater cinema. A sunny pop gem like "Palermo" he just shakes out of his sleeve. On "B-Seiten" the fun-loving Dresden native, who has been living in Vienna for five years, also shows his reflective side at times and becomes as majestic as one can get without being kitschy. "Young" begins supercooled and of course can not hold back, transforms at the latest in the chorus into a horny, stormy thing.
The reduced acoustic ballad "Schlaflied" finally grows into a soul anthem to soar into the sky. Let's not kid ourselves. It's just beautiful.
You can't always get what you want... but you get what you need!