Berliner Luft
Scooter
An 1899 operetta crushed through a hardcore kick · 2:47
hardcore techno, Lincke, club-name roll-call, compression
Chattanooga Choo Choo
Glenn Miller & His Orchestra
The 1941 melody Lindenberg rerouted to Pankow · 3:01
swing, big band, wartime, the source
Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin
Bully Buhlan
The 1951 original — not Dietrich, not Knef · 3:17
Schlager, postwar Berlin, the suitcase, first pressing
Pack die Badehose ein
Boppin’ B
Munich teaches Berlin its own history · 3:00
rockabilly cover, Wannsee, EG 7582, gloriously unnecessary
Berlin, dein Gesicht hat Sommersprossen
Hildegard Knef & Bert Kaempfert
Flaws as beauty, scars as character · 2:20
Schlager, 1966, freckles, tender
Helden
David Bowie
Recorded at Hansa by the Wall, sung in German · 3:41
Hansa Studios, German version, Antonia Maass, 1977
The Passenger (London)
Siouxsie & The Banshees
The cover as proof the original mattered · 5:09
post-punk, brass, all-covers album, S-Bahn
The Passenger (Kopenhagen)
Volbeat
Berlin → London → Copenhagen, the chain’s end · 3:37
Danish heavy rock, cover chain, S-Bahn, propulsive
Auf’m Bahnhof Zoo
Nina Hagen Band
Four octaves against the terminus · 5:24
punk opera, Bahnhof Zoo, detonation, 1978
Sumpf, Sand und Stahlbeton
Kevin Mayfield
The concrete core — a béton-brut hymn · 4:30
orchestral hymn, béton brut, Berlin concrete, the center
Blaue Augen
Gunter Gabriel
Country-schlager swallows the NDW classic · 4:02
Gabriel, Ideal cover, Nashville torch, 2009
Ein Herz kann man nicht reparieren
Udo Lindenberg
One Humpe sister; the tracklist keeps the other · 4:43
MTV Unplugged, feat. Inga Humpe, weathered, duet
Berlin
Ideal
The city’s blunt anthem · 3:14
Neue Deutsche Welle, 1980, deadpan, the source classic
Summer in Berlin
Alphaville
Summer in a city that doesn’t deserve one · 4:44
synth-pop, 1984, melancholy, Forever Young
The Carny
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
An Australian’s shadow-Berlin, a dying carnival · 8:01
Hansa Studios, 1986, surreal, funereal
Mont Klamott
Silly
The rubble women, stone by stone · 4:39
AMIGA, Tamara Danz, Trümmerberg, GDR
Emigrantski Raggamuffin
Rotfront
The city as permanent arrival · 3:54
klezmer-dancehall, Kaffee Burger, world orchestra, 2009
The Boy from Berlin
Brigitte Handley
Berlin as an antipodean goth’s longing · 4:18
darkwave, Sydney, post-punk, Sehnsucht
Hauptstadt der Gefühle
Funny van Dannen
Capital of feelings, a container everyone snacks from · 3:16
Kleinkunst, Selfkant-to-Berlin, wry, 1995
Gesprengter Bunker
Gerhard Schöne
Sparrows will outlast the concrete · 2:42
GDR Liedermacher, blown bunker, midday sun, the closing bracket