Image: Hannah + Jacob
The Berlin singer Balbina loves words and playing with language, she observes meticulously, thinks, ponders. We asked her “questions about questions” – how fitting, because that’s exactly what her new album is called.
The interview was conducted by Friederike Schröter.
Balbina, you make songs that are different than a lot of what you hear on the radio. How would you describe your music?
I would say that I make classic pop music - just with a special, somewhat unique style of lyric poetry. For my Polish grandparents, for example, who don't understand German, this is completely catchy pop. The difference between me and other German musicians is just the word combinations and the content.
Your texts mostly describe small, at first glance insignificant, everyday events and exaggerate them. How do these texts come about?
I always have something to write with and am constantly jotting down things that I notice in everyday life. I don't specifically observe the surroundings; I notice these things by chance, for example when I get on the tram. Then, when all these notes start piling up, I start fleshing them out. That takes days of hard work and requires discipline. In the end, various things can emerge from this.
Is this a kind of philosophizing you're doing?
You could say that: I pursue my own philosophy. I don't have any answers, for anything, but I go through the world observing, always searching and - in a positive sense - overwhelmed by everything. The very concept of time drives me crazy: Sometimes time goes by so quickly, and then again, when I'm sitting at the dentist, for example, five minutes seem like an eternity.
When did you start processing your questions into texts?
This started in elementary school, when I wrote short poems and plays - without anyone encouraging me to do so. I've always been fascinated by the fact that you can play with words and that they can evoke images and stories in the brain. I wanted to be able to do that.
But after graduating from high school you studied business administration – something completely different. Was that a sensible decision?
I wanted to give my mother the feeling that I was trying to support myself. It wasn't a bad thing to have studied business administration for a few semesters. Above all, to learn this on your own initiative. But the subject itself wasn't my thing at all.
After your studies you worked for a while.
Yes, after completing my intermediate diploma, I worked - in addition to music - as a saleswoman in a fashion boutique until 2015. But for me it was just a job to earn money - my main activity was always music, which I made in the evenings and on weekends. You're tired after 40 hours of work, but it's hard to make a living from music alone. It works somewhat now, but you never know how long it will work.
Now you can make a living from your music?
With record sales these days - you sell about a hundredth of what you used to sell - it's extremely difficult to even be able to finance a new album. And I'm not talking about being able to make a living from music. I have to move from project to project and check each time whether the budget is enough for musicians, studio and the next CD pressing. The musicians don’t earn anything through Spotify and all these streaming services. The best known example: Pharrell Williams didn’t even get $3,000 from the streaming service Pandora for 43 million streams of “Happy”! This expectation of nothingness in art is very harmful. Being signed to a record company doesn't help either... It's a fight for survival.
Around your songs you developed the “stage character” Balbina, who wears unusual, mostly stiff clothes, has doll-like make-up and does strange things in the music videos. How did this character come about?
For me, music presentation has a lot in common with theater: When I appear in front of an audience, whether in person or indirectly via a photo on the CD cover, I also want to convey the content as a figure. I couldn't appear as I am privately: in black clothes and horn-rimmed glasses. That wouldn't do justice to my project, my music, which I invest a lot in, and I would feel uncomfortable. I always think about how I can accompany the music visually. For example, on the cover of my new CD I'm depicted as very light and fragile. I wanted it to be very porcelain-like so that it appears vulnerable and thin-skinned. And then I develop a costume, make-up, hairstyle, scenery – I do it all myself.
Do you ever meet people who can't relate to your music or the production around it?
Yes, I often encounter a lack of understanding. Some people refuse to engage with my music. I have to expect that because the pattern of women in the pop industry is completely different. She wears unbraided pigtails, has white eyebrows and a costume that is reminiscent of Korean traditional clothing. It's a challenge to deal with everyone saying, "Uh, we're not putting you on the show because people are upset when they see you." We prefer the one with a ponytail and a regular t-shirt. On the other hand, I was already an outsider at school and got used to this role. It would surprise me more today if RTL invited me to the chart show.
Two years ago you toured with Grönemeyer and played as his opening act. What was it like being the inspiration for a grand master of German pop?
I wasn't much of a fanatic - I make music that's too calm and melancholic for that. I started the evening calmly before Herbert powered through three hours. At the beginning of the tour the nervousness was unbearable for me: I generally have a lot of stage nervousness and that was the first time I performed in front of 20,000 people - that was just amazing. Absurdly, you get used to it. From the 10th concert onwards it was somehow okay.
Was this tour important for you career-wise?
Of course, a lot of people experience you this way and you become better known, but it doesn't click and you're famous. What was most important to me was the experience: physically focusing on the appointments and allocating my strength. We often played several evenings in a row and only had a day's break in between - and that for two months. Normally I'm completely exhausted after two weeks of touring, but in these two months I've learned how to plan myself well and take it easy.
What role do Berlin and your Polish origins play for you?
For me, Berlin was always the place where we arrived, in a country where many things were possible that were not possible in Poland. In the 90s my home country opened up, but unfortunately everything is now regressing at a rapid pace. It worries me very much that populists are in power there too. I love Poland as much as I love Germany and I like the people there, but politics and the development of civil rights worry me a lot.
The Berlin singers talk about their way of recording songs and why studying business administration wasn't for them.
