linguistic:voice_change, structural:scholar_edition
Germany

Ton Steine Scherben, one of the first and most influential German language rock bands of the 1970s and early 1980s, were well known for the highly political lyrics of vocalist Rio Reiser. The band became a musical mouthpiece of new left movements, such as the squatting movement, during that time in Germany and their hometown of West Berlin in particular. Their lyrics were, at the beginning, anti-capitalist and anarchist, and the band had connections to members of the German Red Army Faction movement before they became illegal. Later songs were about more complex issues such as unemployment ("Mole Hill Rockers") or homosexuality ("Mama war so"). They also contributed to two full-length concept album about homosexuality, which were issued under the name Brühwarm (literally: boiling warm) in cooperation with a gay-revue group.

A dissatisfied German youth in the late 1970s and early 1980s resulted in a strand of highly politicized German-language Punkrock ("Deutschpunk"), which mostly concerned itself with politically radical left-wing lyrics, mostly influenced by the Cold War. Probably the most important German-language punk band was Slime from Hamburg, who were the first band whose LP was banned because of political topics. Their songs "Deutschland" ("Germany"), "Bullenschweine", "Polizei SA/SS", and the anti-imperialist "Yankees raus" ("Yankees out") were banned, some of them are still banned today, because they propagated the use of violence against the police or compared the police to the SA and SS of Nazi Germany.

The Cologne-based rock group BAP is known for their committed and intelligently written lyrics, dealing with discrimination and the power games of Germany's political elites in many of their songs. The song " Kristallnaach " (1982) is a point in case. It analyses the corruptibility of the present-day masses for new forms of fascism, while referring to the "Night of Broken Glass" that took place in 1938.

In East Germany, protesting against the state was often prohibited. Despite this, the song Ermutigung by Wolf Biermann became a widely popular protest song against the SED government.