Top 10 Most Polarizing German Music Artists and Bands

Xavier Naidoo is a chart-topping RnB singer whose music is such a huge part of German pop culture that most people don't even take notice of who this man is.

For many, he is just a gifted singer with a soulful voice and inspirational, somewhat spiritual lyrics, making music that simply sounds beautiful. Quite often, he praises love and peace. He sang with popular and beloved artists such as Silbermond, Kool Savas, and even the most harmless Schlager singer Andrea Berg. He was a soul singer similar to Ich+Ich's Adel Tawil, for example, who stands for positive values and poetry. Adel Tawil is awesome and a nice person with a passion for music. He's exactly how the music sounds.

But what the occasional listener didn't know for a long time is that Xavier Naidoo, on the other hand, is a full-blown conspiracy theorist on the level of B.O.B. He often stylizes himself as some kind of savior on a mission to spread his twisted "knowledge." Germany's politicians are puppets, Satanists control the world, terrorism is staged, we live on the edge of an apocalypse, and so on - according to him, of course.

Once you know that side of him, it's impossible not to interpret his lyrics in that light. Then, all of a sudden, it's not inspirational anymore. It's subliminally dangerous. Depending on whether you know his personal views, you either think the music is stunningly beautiful or terrifying.

He's been around since the late '90s, and many saw him as a tame and harmless pop star. But in the last few years, he has released two, three, maybe four songs where he became very open about his views, making people more aware of what he's really about.

His fans loved him because of his soulful voice and sweet poetry, and he hosted successful music shows. But in the last few years, it became more and more apparent that he is part of a strange cult of conspiracy theorists and wants to spread the ideology. A pity, because he is very talented.

Haftbefehl's hip-hop music is based on a wild mix of languages interpolated into very basic and vulgar German with a prominent accent but a sick flow. For that style, he was praised as creative and unique, plus very authentic in his portrayal of migrant street life.

But he was also widely made fun of for his direct and mixed language wording and was often thought to be unable to speak correct German. Infamously, the well-known (but terrible) critic website laut.de gave two different of his albums one and five stars respectively, and for the exact same reason, simply because they had two different reviewers.

In the German hip-hop scene, Bushido is something like the godfather who brought the genre to where it is today, both stylistically and commercially. He established the typical German gangsta sound, and he was also one of the first non-pop rappers to have huge mainstream success. He still is the most successful one.

But he is only that respected in the hip-hop community. His violent attitude, aggressive curse language, and mafia ties have made him pretty hated by the masses of pop listeners, and he is often seen as spreading terrible values. Hip-hop fans know how to interpret rap lyrics, but pop fans don't.

Tokio Hotel's hype in Germany between 2005 and 2009 has been repeatedly compared to Beatlemania by the German press. Screaming fans were everywhere they appeared, and such a fanatic fanbase was completely unusual for a German group.

The emo stamp was put on them later on. Initially, Bill Kaulitz was the "guy with the anime hair" because anime was a huge thing over here, and an entire generation was raised on it. Emo was American before it found its way over here.

Nevertheless, the band had just as many haters as fans, especially because on their first album, Bill Kaulitz didn't hit puberty voice change yet. But also because they started writing their lyrics on their second, not first album. They had the "manufactured child star" image they wanted to get rid of on all their albums after their debut.

It only worked after they took a four-year break and changed to electro-pop, which was very positively received in Germany.

Fler has one of the oddest careers in German hip-hop. His career started with the Bushido collaboration album "Carlo Cokxxx Nutten," an aggressive gangsta rap album that would become legendary in the years to come.

Then he only occasionally had a hit and was widely regarded as a very bad lyricist in German hip-hop, while Bushido became a megastar. Then, in the mid-2010s, he discovered trap and completely changed. He gave lots of interviews showing a Kanye West-ish short temper in combination with maximum artful visions, ideals, and ambitions.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, he was praised and topped the charts, and now is often seen as the ultimate stylish trendsetter in recent hip-hop. Some still hate him and don't like his over-idealistic treatment of hip-hop, but he's not considered wack now.

SpongeBozz's rapping talent is very well known to German hip-hop fans. He is probably the fastest German double-time rapper. His rhyming abilities are insane, and in battle rap tournaments, he has so far destroyed everybody that ever crossed his way.

He's the "God of Battle," has a very big fanbase, and if you take a look at the Amazon comments on his last album (on German hip-hop releases, Amazon is a good indicator of the public's opinion), it has over 1500 reviews (a recent successful hip-hop album usually has around 300) and an average of five stars.

But critics and magazines refuse to give him good ratings. They criticize the lack of content and repetitive topics, even though they acknowledge his techniques. At the same time, they give full scores to Kollegah, who has exactly the same pros and cons, except that Kolle portrays a pimp and SpongeBozz a cartoon character on cocaine.

That doesn't change the level of lyrical quality.

Oh yeah, the Schlager genre. Where to start? The genre is easy to digest, harmless, and easy to remember. It has been around since the beginnings of post-war Germany, even though it changed throughout the decades.

In the 2000s, nobody liked the genre. It was considered uncool and embarrassing, something only elderly people listened to. It still sold multi-platinum.

Then Fischer came along and released a song called "Atemlos durch die Nacht" in 2013, and an album called "Farbenspiel." It immediately became one of the best-selling albums and songs in German music history. Since Fischer is young, can sing, and has the appeal of a regular pop star, she managed to bring Schlager close to pop audiences while at the same time pleasing Schlager fans. She made young teens listen to Schlager, even performed in stadiums, and with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Even with all that hype and the fact that she is everywhere... I know nobody who openly admits being her fan.

Rammstein polarized metal fans: Are Rammstein metal or not?

I personally don't think they are metal, but when I knew less about metal, I thought they were metal. According to the metal music experts from Encyclopaedia Metallum, Rammstein aren't metal.

Right now, Rammstein is so big in Germany that they are universally seen as one of the absolute greatest bands in the country. When they started, the band was very polarizing, mostly because of their image and Lindemann's odd pronunciation, which many found to be imitating Hitler due to the emphasis on "r"s and "ch"s.

They also had a majestic way with words, played with aesthetics known from Leni Riefenstahl, and even used footage from "Olympia" in one of their videos. Then, you could read several things into their songs that weren't there. For example, a song called "White Flesh" has absolutely no racist content whatsoever.

For quite some time, they were associated with right-wing politics and Nazism, which is absolute nonsense. Anyone who reads into their lyrics knows why they use all that imagery: to draw associations that create an intense atmosphere fitting the dark topics of their poetry. The band has believably stated on several occasions that they lean more to the left wing and have made songs against homophobia ("Mann gegen Mann") and musically responded to their unwanted image ("Links 2, 3, 4").

In the meantime, everyone knows them well enough to know they are not in the slightest close to Nazism, but back then, it was probably the biggest misunderstanding in German music history.