INTRODUCTION
SINCE the emergence of German Schlager music at the end of the 19th century, the artistic value of the genre has been passionately discussed. In line with the majority of researchers in the field of popular music, Wicke et al. (2007) describe Schlager as being “based on a modular principle of constants on the one hand (e.g., a strict verse–chorus scheme, cadence harmonies, formulaic melodic lines, and topics limited to general spheres of life)” (p. 647), and these constants being “wrapped” in an ever-changing set of variables composed of elements from popular music genres such as Jazz, Latin American, and Rock music on the other hand. Therefore, Schlager has often been defined by its lyrical rather than its musical content. In addition, it has been widely criticized for its failure to develop a sound of its own; rather, it has adapted to changing media habits and contemporary music tastes (Nathaus, 2017). The majority of musicologists have long interpreted this degree of variability as merely arbitrary, leading to the marginalization of this otherwise widely popular musical genre in the scientific discourse.
The literary scientist Jens Reisloh (2011) defines Schlager primarily by comparing it unfavorably with other forms of German-language popular music (Neues Deutsches Lied [NDL, New German Song]), on the grounds, for example, that it fails to treat largely middle-class/bourgeois topics critically, is restricted to heterosexual relationships, and has an escapist entertainment function. In fact, musicologists have persistently rejected Schlager, describing it as an uninspired and artificial product, because of its simplicity in terms of both its content and stylistic elements. This perspective can be traced back to the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno (1968), who introduced the term “culture industry” (p. 48) with reference to Schlager (and its international counterparts), emphasizing its supposed character as a simple, standardized, and thus highly marketable type of music. Subsequent analyses of Schlager and those who listen to it have used similarly pejorative wordings. For example, the music psychologist Klaus-Ernst Behne (1982) even characterized Schlager listeners as being “in search of simple musical structures due to the inability to understand Bach’s polyphony” (p. 102).
By contrast, other voices in systematic musicology have repeatedly spoken out in favor of exploring supposedly inferior popular music genres (Lehmann & Kopiez, 2013; von Appen, 2012). Despite the long-standing academic ostracism of the genre and its declining popularity, Schlager music has flourished anew during the past decade. In 2018, Helene Fischer was the first German-language Schlager singer to appear in Forbes’ international top-10 list of the highest-paid women in show business, ranking eighth with an income of $32 million in that year (O’Malley Greenburg, 2018), and many aspiring artists in the genre are seeking to follow suit.
Content Analyses of German Language Music
In a recent content analysis, Ruth (2019) examined the prevalence of topics in 588 songs selected from the German yearly charts from 1954 to 2014. However, only 25.7% of the songs in Ruth’s analyses were written in the German language. The findings from this corpus cannot therefore be generalized to German-language popular music. Only a few publications have been dedicated exclusively to Schlager in a systematic way—presumably due to academic reservations. However, exceptions exist from neighboring disciplines such as literary studies and ethnomusicology. For instance, Stoeva-Holm undertook a linguistic analysis of the lyrics of around 595 Schlager songs spanning a period from the 1970s until 2005. Her aim was “to analyze discursive means of emotion thematization in order to explore the bandwidth of emotions in the genre” (Stoeva-Holm, 2005, p. 7). She described the general topic of Schlager as love, subdivided into further motives such as “grief and happiness in love, solitude and loneliness, illusions of wealth, good luck, and wanderlust” (p. 36). When we coded the types of relationships represented in the corpus in the present study, we followed Stoeva-Holm’s approach, insofar as she describes the relationship between artist and lyric as the “staging of a speaking subject in which a fictional person and the artist amalgamate” (p. 36). The types of relationships coded in the present study refer to this “lyrical subject”.
Although Reisloh studied NDL rather than Schlager, his mostly negative description of Schlager sheds light on several aspects of the genre that have often been described but not tested empirically. NDL, he says, takes a critical perspective on social and political issues, promoting alternative life concepts and new forms of love relationships, and “ranging from questioning the actions of the individual to concrete political fight at demonstrations, squattings, or concerts" (Reisloh, 2011, p. 85). By contrast, Schlager does not take a critical attitude or refer to controversial topics. Rather, its lyrics “group appealing vocabulary around wishful projections of love, loyalty, longing, adventure, homesickness [serving the function] of absolute entertainment, distraction, and helping people escape into a better world" (Reisloh, 2011, p. 86). He agrees with Stoeva-Holm that the role of love is dominant in Schlager: “mostly bourgeois ideals of eternal love, marriage and fidelity are often reproduced without criticism… only heterosexual relationships are depicted, which predominantly follow traditional gender roles; all other forms are taboo” (Reisloh, 2011, p. 87).
Gender Stereotypes and Social Diversity in Music Content Analyses
The majority of quantitative content analyses in popular music studies follow a general approach of isolating topics and determining their share in the lyrics examined. The study by Christenson et al. (2019) is a recent example of such a “traditional” content analysis. In line with the majority of analyses (e.g., Edwards, 1994; Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014), Christenson et al. found most American popular music from a corpus spanning 1,000 songs from 1960 to 2010 to be primarily focused on (heterosexual) relationships, love, and sexuality.
While in most of these analyses, topic treatment plays a subordinate role, the work of North et al. (2017) includes how individual topics are dealt with. In a computer-based analysis of over 4,000 UK “top 5” pop song lyrics, the authors identified changes, e.g., a decrease in lyrics focusing on levelling (the use of words to “ignore individual differences and to build a sense of completeness and assurance”, p. 643) and satisfaction (“terms associated with positive affective states”, p. 643). The authors also addressed the treatment of a topic called diversity, which they defined as “words describing individuals or groups of individuals differing from the norm”, p. 643. However, few mentions were found here, and no development is described.
Specialized content analyses of diversity-related aspects in popular song lyrics have been carried out for several (sub)genres, content-related categories, and time periods. For instance, Chafetz (1974) points to a clear bias toward sexist depictions of women in popular music lyrics. Other topics examined include representations of social class (Lewis, 1977), aging and the elderly in American country music (Aday & Austin, 2000), rebellious messages in rock and rap music (Knobloch-Westerwick et al. 2008), black feminism in third-wave woman’s rap (Chepp, 2015), and references to substance use (Roberts et al., 1999), to name but a few.
Another quantitative content analysis on representations of sexism in popular music was carried out by Wilkinson (1976). Where attributable, 200 songs (“big hits” that were popular between 1954 and 1968) were coded by the author in terms of adjectives describing men or women. Wilkinson’s results remain largely ambiguous, with some confirming and some contradicting sex-role stereotypes of the time. However, Wilkinson expands the content categories of his study to include information about the artists of the analyzed pieces of music. Based on Cashbox magazine’s chart data, the author states that, particularly during the advent of rock’n’roll in the late 1950s, as little as 12% of “top songs” were recorded by female singers. Although various authors (e.g., Rice, 1980) have observed an increase in female recording artists since the second half of the twentieth century, the imbalance described here still largely persists (e.g., Krause & North, 2019).
Further studies have examined the treatment of gender stereotypes in English-language popular music in sophisticated ways. For instance, Freudiger and Almquist (1978) found that, in a corpus of 151 Soul, Country, and Easy Listening songs from 1972 to 1973, men were usually portrayed as conforming to masculine gender stereotypes, whereas depictions of women were associated, to a lesser extent, with female stereotypes. This finding was explained by the idea that “real men” are expected to avoid “sissy stuff” while the female role is less rigidly defined. Hyden and McCandless (1983) yielded ambivalent results for a rather small corpus of 106 “Billboard top pop singles” from 1972 to 1982, indicating that certain stereotypic feminine characteristics (loving, faithful, and gentle) were also frequently used to describe men. In an analysis of 1,164 popular songs from 1946 to 1976, drawn at 10-year intervals from Song Hits Magazine, Cooper (1984) also comes to sobering conclusions: Overall, 97% of the songs included in the analysis were found to contain at least one of 11 stereotypes of women. Nevertheless, the author observed an incipient decrease in prejudice against women.
The content analyses presented here differ in scope, creation periods of the songs studied, and categories for coding. Corpus creation in these studies employed different strategies and was based on varying chart metrics, which may have introduced thematic bias. In some cases, no information was provided about the criteria for including individual songs. These aspects make it difficult to draw conclusions that go beyond the respective corpora. In various English-language popular music genres, however, gender stereotypes continue to be reproduced until today. The gender bias on the part of the artists, observed by Cooper as well as Krause and North (2019), seems to add to this.
Aims and Research Questions
The present content analysis of Schlager songs aims at a quantitative-empirical examination of the composition of contents and the values conveyed within the genre. Additionally, both the gender of the artists and other categories of social diversity were included as variables (i.e., sexual orientation and migration status). Schlager music has often been defined as taking a distinctly conservative perspective and as having certain formal and content-related parameters (e.g., simple topics and simplistic diction). However, to date, no comprehensive analysis has provided evidence that these characteristics apply to the genre as a whole.
Societal and political changes have led to a broader discourse on diversity, immigration, and marginalized groups among the German public in the past years. In this analysis, I examine the actual role of these characteristics and groups in Schlager music, in both the lyrics and the artists. Therefore, the present analysis focuses on different manifestations of social and ethnic diversity (a) within the songs’ lyrics and (b) among the artists. Based on a corpus of 548 top-10 Schlager songs and with respect to the literature summarized in the background section, the current study examines the following research questions and hypotheses:
RQ1: What are the main topics of German Schlager, and does the popularity of the various topics change over time?
RQ2: Which norms and values are expressed in Schlager songs?
H1: The reproduction of bourgeois values and norms is constant over time.
H2: Schlager lyrics almost exclusively describe heterosexual relationships.
H3: There is a decrease in gender stereotypes and sexist clichés over time.
H4: There is an increase in lyrics with critical subtext over time.
RQ3: How diverse are the performers of the genre?
H5: Female artists are underrepresented.
H6: The number of artists with an immigrant background increases over time.
H7: The number of artists with an LGBT background gradually increases over time.
RQ1 aims to provide an overview of thematic developments in successful Schlager songs over the past decade. RQ2 focuses on the reproduction of certain bourgeois or middle-class ideals, as reflected in the portrayal of relationship types, gender stereotypes, and cultural clichés. RQ3 explores the diversity of artists by incorporating categories for artist-specific information, such as gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity, into the content analysis.
METHOD
The current study is an integrative content analysis (ICA) as defined by Früh (2017). In addition to content categories, it also includes background variables of the artists studied. Like all modern forms of quantitative content analysis, ICA is based on the principle of media content analysis described by Berelson (1952) which is characterized as a means for the "objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication" (p. 18). Hence, complexity in a body of texts is reduced by identifying underlying patterns and by showing existing tendencies in the ways topics are treated (Rössler, 2017).
ICA is not a computer-aided method – three trained coders coded the data and counted the categories in this study. Based on the research questions posed by the investigator, the members of the coding team identify “reference passages” within a small proportion of the analyzed texts (n = 20 songs lyrics) that serve to form the categories for the main coding phase. At this point, it should be mentioned that quantifying content characteristics always implies human interpretation during every stage of the analysis and is, therefore, always subjective to a certain extent. Once the categories have been formed, the training phase begins. Here, the category system is consolidated and differentiated with a further subset of texts, in our case lyrics. Through regular feedback between the coders and the investigator, disputed cases are discussed, thereby increasing inter-rater reliability. This is then followed by the main coding phase involving the complete corpus, which the coders complete independently without mutual feedback. All text passages that correspond to the content categories are coded and quantified in this phase – guided by the inventory of reference examples. The aggregated data of all coders are then analyzed and interpreted by the investigator.
As these subjective components in ICA suggest, it is not the aim of this study to clarify individual findings down to the last detail. Rather, the objective is to create an overview of the current popularity of various themes and developments in Schlager to allow for generalizable statements.
Data
The current analysis used chart data from the DJ Top 100 National (Berufsverband Diskjockey e.V., 2020). This exclusively German-language music hit list is compiled by the Berufsverband Diskjockey (BVD), a professional association of disk jockeys in Germany. It must be noted that this is neither an airplay nor a sales chart list. The approximately 1,000 members of the BVD are invited to carry out a subjective ranking of contemporary German language compositions (mostly Schlager songs) on a weekly basis. In this ranking process, part of the ratings is given by the BVD while the other part is contributed by the members. If the same title is proposed by at least three persons independently, it is included in the ranking and offered to the remaining members for assessment. According to this procedure, the weekly ratings are independent of the preceding week’s rankings (M. Winkler, personal communication, August 20, 2020). There might be an implicit selection bias in the corpus, resulting in a comparably large share of songs that could be identified as Partyschlager. Due to the high degree of diversification and scalability in popular music, I decided not to further distinguish between subgenres. Chart data for each week can be downloaded from https://www.djtop100.de/charts/current/national. For the purposes of the current study, the weekly charts from 2009 to 2019 were reduced to the top-10 titles. Duplicate song lyrics (n = 8) as well as “hit mixes” (n = 9) that included parts of multiple compositions were excluded to obtain a corpus composed of individual German-language songs only. This resulted in a total of N = 548 songs. For many songs, we were unable to find lyrics online. Therefore, we transcribed about half of the corpus ourselves. The lyrics we found online were double-checked for correctness. Thus, every song has been listened to by at least two coders.
Content Categories
To ensure comparability, eight main topics were adopted from Ruth (2019), which were in turn derived from several previous studies (Cole, 1971; Hyden & McCandless, 1983; Meier, 2000; Mohan & Malone, 1994; Rice, 1980). These featured 1. Society and politics, 2. Violence, 3. Drugs (including alcohol and cigarettes), 4. Love, 5. Nonsense, 6. Music and party, and 7. Places and journeys. To meet the thematic focus of this analysis, three further categories were obtained through Empirically Guided Category Formation, a procedure used in ICA (Früh, 2017): 8. Sex, 9. Friendship, and 10. Leisure time activities. In this multi-step procedure, categories are generated from a subset of the lyrics (n = 20).
If the lyrics featured signs of a critical treatment of subjects, this information was included in an additional category: 11. Critical subtext (for a definition, see background section). This category reflects Reisloh’s (2011) hypothesis that there is no critical treatment of topics in Schlager songs. To account for gender stereotypes and sexist clichés featured in the lyrics, 2 × 2 categories were used to assess (non-sexual) gender stereotypes (12. and 13.) and sexist clichés (14. and 15.), regarding men and women, respectively. An additional coding variable encompassed largely middle-class or bourgeois values as described by von Schoenebeck (1994) and Reisloh (2011), such as a) Classical family patterns [i.e., father, mother, child], b) Sense of home/tradition, c) Diligence/recognition, d) Eternal love and fidelity, and e) Religious values/decency/compassion/honesty. Again, two additional categories were included using Empirically Guided Category Formation, namely f) Freedom, and g) Resilience/perseverance. Although it was clear beforehand that non-heterosexual relationships would seldom be portrayed in the songs’ lyrics, an additional category, 16. Type of relationship, was included.
Formal Categories
Formal categories aim at quantifying formal coding units, i.e., manifest facts that do not demand for the coders’ inference. As opposed to content categories, they can be measured, counted, or transcribed directly (Rössler, 2017). The formal or artist-based categories in this analysis included gender, immigrant background, and sexual orientation of the artists. This information was obtained through Internet research, and based on at least two different sources. If the relevant information could not be found or verified by a second source, the corresponding category was coded as missing/unknown.
Coding Procedure and Reliability
In an active feedback loop, three coders were extensively trained to assure a high degree of inter-coder reliability in the following main coding phase. This was controlled for in a pre-coding phase with another 25 songs from the original corpus. Inter-coder reliability was calculated following Holsti’s (1969) method for all of the categories obtained. Eighteen of the twenty-two content-based variables yielded high degrees of reliability, ranging between rH = .9 and 1.0. For four of the categories, ranging between rH = .72 and .89, additional explanations for the categorization were given to the coders for in-depth training.
During the main coding phase, no further explanations were given to the coders, to ensure independent categorization. All of the coders received (1) a comprehensive code book featuring information on all categories, and (2) an individually randomized dataset including all of the titles and artists, to avoid order effects.
It is worth noting at this point that many of the songs had to be transcribed manually, as no transcripts were available online. These new transcripts were then checked for correctness by the corresponding author. In another study (Thiesen, 2024), the same team of coders analyzed and coded intramusical features (e.g., structural changes, such as pop drops and the use of musical clichés) in the same corpus of songs. Therefore, I cannot deny that listening to the music might have had an impact on the coding process. However, while not every coder heard every song during the coding phase, high inter-coder agreement coefficients indicate a good degree of inter-subjectivity.
Analysis Strategy
For the most part, the current analysis followed the strategy of Christenson et al. (2019). In the first step, descriptive statistics were calculated for all content categories. These data were then analyzed using single linear regression analyses in the statistical computing environment R (R Core Team, 2021). This second step allowed for the identification of trends over time. Due to the smaller sample, the corpus being limited to a 10-year span, and to avoid a suggestive interpretation of the results, I decided not to implement change point analyses.
RESULTS
Content of Schlager Lyrics
As depicted in Figure 1, songs referring to love (75.36%) outnumbered all of the other topics by far. This was followed by songs that included references to leisure activities (41.42%), music and parties (31.39%), places and journeys (28.47%), nonsense (26.46%), and sex (24.45%). The category “nonsense”, which I adopted from Ruth (2019), deserves a brief explanation. In the understanding of coders, this term refers to humorous texts that are generally characterized by a lack of content or plot and that serve merely entertaining purposes (i.e., “Links Rechts” by Mickie Krause, featuring the lines “I was on a trip on a big ship/ The captain on the bridge had everything under control/ But then a storm came up in the middle of the sea/ And the whole thing swayed back and forth/ To the left/ To the right/ And again/ To the left/ To the right/ And sing/ Döp-döp-döp-döp-döp… ” [translation by the author]).
Fig. 1. Overall distribution of topics in the corpus
Because multiple topics could be present in a single song, the content categories were treated as non-exclusive, while the songs were used as coding units. Therefore, the overall number of responses exceeded the number of songs. A Shapiro-Wilk test on the distribution of topics showed a significant departure from normality, W(1467) = 0.909, p < .001. Figure 2 depicts the popularity of individual topics over time. To assess linear changes, single linear regressions were calculated for all individual topics with time as a predictor. The prevalence of most topics was stable over the time course, yielding no significant results for all categories except Nonsense. On average, nonsense-themed songs decreased by 0.93% per year, β = –0.93, p = .002.
Fig. 2. Distribution of topics in the corpus over time
Representations of norms and values in Schlager lyrics
As Schlager is known for expressing conservative values, seven categories of middle-class or bourgeois norms and values were set up for this analysis. Overall, 26.09% of the songs included explicit references to these traditional values. Not surprisingly, eternal love & fidelity accounted for the largest share (19.53%). The depiction of traditional family patterns was much less frequent (1.64%). Additional categories featured resilience/perseverance (1.46%), religious or religion-related values such as decency, compassion, and honesty (1.28); sense of home and tradition (0.91%); freedom (0.71%); and diligence/recognition (0.55%). Figure 3 shows the distribution of these values over time. As expected, the overall prevalence of norms and values did not vary greatly over time, suggesting that the core values of the genre remained largely stable (see Figure 3).
Fig. 3. Distribution of middle-class or bourgeois values over time
The only category that showed significant linear growth was songs featuring resilience/perseverance. Absent during the first four years of the time series, these references started to appear in 2013 and increased by 2.31% per year, β = 2.31, p = .038. However, given the low overall prevalence of references to resilience and perseverance, this result should be interpreted with caution.
Portrayal of Relationship Types
The portrayal of different types of relationships was coded with respect to the gender of the performers, i.e., when a male singer sung about a female partner and vice versa. Although 451 songs (82.3%) depicted (romantic) relationships, the majority of these pieces (52.37% or 287 songs) did not indicate the sexual orientation of the protagonists and thus could not be assigned specific “relationship types”. In most cases, this was achieved by addressing the second person singular and by omitting gender-specific cues. Of the remainder, 162 songs (29.56%) featured heterosexual relationships whereas only two songs (0.36%) contained clear references to homosexual relationships.
Gender Stereotypes and Sexist Clichés
References to gender stereotypes and sexist clichés about women and men alike were coded in four categories (two content categories for both sexes). Gender stereotypes were defined as non-sexual; e.g., in Claudia Jung’s Frauenherzen: “women are impulsive, emotional, jealous” (Haselsteiner & Bender, 2016), whereas sexist clichés implied (largely derogatory) sexual references about persons of a certain gender; e.g., in Ireen Sheer’s Männer wollen alle das Eine: “All men want that one thing – and if they get it, you’re alone” (Meinunger et al., 2010). Table 1 shows the absolute proportions of these references by gender.
Table 1. Analysis of (non-sexual) gender stereotypes and sexist clichés
| Non-sexual g Gender stereotypes | Sexist clichés | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| about females | about males | about females | about males |
| 14.6% (80 cases) | 4.01% (22%) | 11.86% (65 cases) | 3.47% (19 cases) |
In both coding categories, female individuals depicted in the lyrics were represented by gender stereotypes and sexist clichés approximately three times more often than male protagonists. Being constantly present in Schlager lyrics from 2009 to 2019, there was no change in the prevalence of gender-based stereotypes of either type over the time span investigated. Female gender stereotypes depicted in the lyrics varied unsystematically between 6.12% and 23.08% per year. None of the individual regression models reached significance. To illustrate this variation, Figure 4 provides an overview of the shares of non-sexual gender stereotypes about women over the time course.
Fig. 4. Distribution of (non-sexual) female gender stereotypes over time
Critical subtext
Reisloh (2011) describes the uncritical character of Schlager lyrics as defining the genre itself. As new artists and topics have entered the genre over the past decade, the style in which topics are treated may have changed. Therefore, the (un)critical subtext of the lyrics was coded as a dichotomous variable. Overall, 15.51% of the lyrics (85 songs) featured a critical treatment of individual topics.
While the share of critical subtext in the corpus varied between 6% and 23.33% per year, an overall trend toward a more critical treatment of the topics discussed was observed (β = 0.85, p = .021). This development seems to have accelerated in the second half of the decade (see Figure 5).
Fig. 5. Distribution of critical subtext in top-10 Schlager lyrics over time
Social Diversity of the Artists
The overall gender ratio of the artists in top-10 Schlager songs was imbalanced: 383 songs (69.89%) were performed by one or more male singers, while only 123 songs (22.45%) were performed by one or more female artists. An additional 41 songs (7.48%) were sung by mixed-gender bands, and one singer was categorized as diverse after coming out publicly as non-binary (although several years after hitting the charts in 2009). Over the years, there is a clear trend toward more songs by female artists in the top-10 songs analyzed (see Figure 6). A linear regression analysis confirmed this development (β = 0.84, p = .009). However, since some performers are represented by several songs in the corpus, this does not necessarily reflect the number of successful female performers.
Fig. 6. Gender distribution of the artists over time
A similar development was observed for artists who publicly defined themselves as non-heterosexual (β = 2.35, p = .004, see Figure 7). Overall, 85% of the songs were performed by artists who publicly identified as heterosexual or were in a heterosexual relationship. A further 15 songs, or 2.73% of the corpus, were performed by artists identifying themselves as homosexual, whereas no information on the sexual orientation of the artists could be gathered for 65 songs (11.86%).
Fig. 7. Distribution of artists’ sexual orientations by songs over time
The immigrant backgrounds of the artists were also coded as formal categories. These data were also gathered by online research. Immigration status was coded as present if the artist or their parents came from a country where German was not an official language. Surprisingly, the share of songs from artists with an immigrant background was relatively high (19.71%) over the period investigated, albeit still below the official proportion of 26.7% in the German population (according to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, Statistisches Bundesamt, 2021).
DISCUSSION
In general, the main topics of Schlager lyrics are the same as in other subgenres of German pop music and in international pop music. However, their proportions and the way these topics are dealt with differ considerably (RQ1). For instance, an unusually high proportion (75.36%) of the songs were love-themed, compared with, for example, 56.8% in Ruth’s (2019) analysis of largely international pop songs. Although this has frequently been mentioned in precedent publications (Stoeva-Holm, 2005; von Schoenebeck, 1994), there had been no quantitative empirical evidence to date. There is a clear emphasis on leisure-related lyrics in Schlager, although it should be noted again that in the current analysis, coding categories were used non-exclusively so that individual songs could be assigned several topics. The category leisure activities was assigned to 41.42% of the songs, while music and party (31.39%), places and journeys (28.47%), and nonsense far exceeded the proportions found by Ruth (2019), with 12.1%, 4.1%, and 9.5%, respectively. This distribution remained stable over time and indicates the importance of escapist motives when engaging with this kind of music, as hypothesized by Reisloh (2011). However, this observation may be biased due to the selection of songs that are mostly listened to in an entertaining context. This can also be seen as a confirmation of another claim made by Reisloh: To a large extent, Schlager songs are deliberately apolitical. In this context, a corpus going back further in time could prove fruitful.
In the following section, check (✓) and cross marks (✗) are used to illustrate the verification or falsification of the hypotheses. The norms and values conveyed in Schlager have also changed little over the years (RQ2, H1 ✓). In this context, it is interesting to reflect on the thoughts of Hirsch et al, (1972) concerning the treatment of love in international popular song lyrics from the 1950s onwards. Hirsch and colleagues describe a shift in the positioning of singers, from “passive supplicants” longing for eternal love, toward self-determined actors of their own love life. Despite several decades of societal change, this development seems to be far from complete for Schlager lyrics: More than a quarter of the songs contained references to traditional middle class or bourgeois values. The largest category among these songs referred to eternal love and fidelity, followed by traditional family patterns. For the time period investigated, the stability of these values points to the good marketability of the genre, which has already been described by Adorno (1968). This could be an interesting starting point for a survey study of uses and gratifications. The question of whether the themes and values of the Schlager (still) reflect the audience’s needs can only be answered by the listeners themselves. In light of today’s public discourse on diversity, it seems likely that the “brand core” of the genre will be subject to major changes.
This is supported by a significant linear increase in songs with references to resilience/perseverance. Some of these songs can be interpreted as empowering marginalized groups on a large societal scale, which is all the more surprising given Schlager’s allegedly conservative image and audience. Another encouraging development lies in the significant linear increase of critical subtext in the treatment of Schlager topics (H4 ✓). A positive trend may also be interpreted considering the shift of the genre toward international pop music and its rather critical approach. This development could be subject to a continuation of this study, including a more differentiated treatment of controversial topics in Schlager.
However, lyrics in the genre remain limited to almost exclusively heterosexual relationships (H2 ✓). In the corpus of this study, only two songs (0.36%) contained explicit references to non-heterosexual relationships. While this already reflects an important step in the perception of non-traditional relationship types in German society over recent decades, one may hope for further significant development. In a survey carried out by the Statistical Office of Germany in October/November 2019, 8% of a sample of 13,019 respondents identified as non-heterosexual, and another 8% did not indicate their orientation (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2020). In terms of portraying the reality of life for its (potential) audience, Schlager has a lot of catching up to do.
The third hypothesis of this study could not be verified (H3 ✗): Although the proportion of songs containing gender stereotypes was high, no statistically significant trends were observed. In the overall corpus, there were three times as many generalized statements about women than about men. This difference applied to both gender stereotypes and sexist clichés, and seems – again – to be linked to the inherent conservatism of Schlager. Sparked by the party Schlager song "Layla" by artists DJ Robin & Schürze (Muller et al., 2022), the summer of 2022 saw a public debate about the reproduction of sexist stereotypes in German-language music. While the public discourse could lead to changes in how women are portrayed, the success of the song points in another direction. However, another development could lead to a change in this imbalance in the coming years. The current study indicates an increasing trend in top-10 songs by women over the 10-year period investigated. However, the gender ratio is still heavily imbalanced, with only 22.45% of the songs performed by women and 7.48% by mixed-gender duos or bands (H5 ✓). This is similar to the results of Krause & North (2019; although these refer to the UK weekly top five songs lyrics from 1960 to 2015).
Compared with the proportion in the German population, the share of artists with an immigrant background in our corpus is more encouraging. Nearly one fifth of the songs (19.71%) were performed by a person who was not born with German, Austrian, or Swiss citizenship, or who had at least one parent who was not.
In the past 20 years, it has become easier for German celebrities to publicly come out as non-heterosexual. Therefore, an increase in openly LGBTQIA+ artists may not be too surprising. Although still underrepresented in the field, some prominent Schlager singers have publicly come out as queer in the past few years. In the current corpus, 15 songs (2.73%) were performed by openly non-heterosexual singers. Although there was no support for my corresponding hypothesis (H4 ✗), this finding reflects a shift in the societal perception of sexual minorities, especially in a genre known for explicit conservatism. Due to the relatively short period of time considered in this study and the limited number of songs investigated in the corpus, the trends observed do not necessarily represent continuing developments. In many cases, however, the observed tendencies correspond to the public discourse on diversity, related to both content and artists. The relationship between popular music and topics of public and social discourse is reciprocal and dynamic. With the “revival” of the genre in mainstream popular music, a reorientation in terms of content could also be possible. However, considering the stability of traditional values referred to in many of the songs examined in this study, this seems likely only to a certain extent.
Future content analyses should include a larger set of songs as well as a larger time span. On the basis of an extended corpus, more sophisticated analyses (as in Christenson et al., 2019) could also be carried out, providing more differentiated insights on trends in individual topics.
Societal changes do not happen overnight, and Schlager has long been considered the epitome of conservative values. Future analyses will need to reveal whether the findings reported in this paper signal lasting changes in the range of subjects and diversity of the performers of the genre. Nevertheless, the developments observed in the current analysis—be they content-wise or on the part of the artists—may give cause for optimism that even in the most conservative of German-language music genres, there is room for greater diversity.
END MATTER
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my student assistants, Anica Haubrich and Benedikt Luther, for their dedicated work in transcribing and coding the materials with me. Additionally, I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Holger Schramm for his support during the analysis.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
No financial support of any kind was received for this research.
Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the author upon reasonable request.
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