When Pop Stars Turn the Stage into a Political Platform
In Germany, Sarah Connor and Campino have drawn criticism for delivering political lectures between songs. They are part of a broader international tradition of musicians who mix entertainment with political preaching.
Sarah Connor told her Berlin audience that it was “a privilege” to live in Germany. Her remarks, like Campino’s, alluded to criticism of migration and economic policy. Photo: Gina Wetzler/Redferns/Getty Images
|
Pop stars have recently attracted more attention for their political statements than for their music. Political lectures from the stage, particularly those with a left-wing flavor, are hardly a new phenomenon, but have once again become conspicuous, often in rather risible form.
On Saturday 15 August, Sarah Connor performed before around 20,000 people at the Waldbühne in Berlin. Between songs, she alluded to criticism of migration and economic policy, giving the audience the benefit of her political wisdom by telling them “what a privilege” it was “to live in this country”. Rolling Stone reported on the episode and criticized the debate over Connor’s remarks on social media.
That same evening, Campino performed with Die Toten Hosen before around 65,000 people at the exhibition grounds in Hanover. There, too, the songs were interspersed with political pronouncements. Campino took aim at the idea that public safety in Germany had once been considerably better.
“The idiots who walk through cities and claim everything used to be so much safer and so on”, he said, before blaming social media and its algorithms for making people feel insecure. “Let's not leave this to the others. Let's not give in. It's all nonsense.”
The discrepancy between Campino’s message and Germany’s crime statistics appears to matter little under the glare of the stage lights.
Campino, frontman of the punk band Die Toten Hosen, in a tailcoat during King Charles III’s visit to Germany. On stage, he frequently makes his political views part of the performance. Photo: Jens Büttner/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images
Grönemeyer’s Propaganda and the Legal Fallout
German pop stars have long turned to the concert stage for political speeches. Herbert Grönemeyer attracted considerable attention in September 2019 when, during a concert at Vienna’s Stadthalle, he spoke out against racism, exclusion and a shift to the political right. Then German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas thanked him obsequiously.
That does not always end well. One of Grönemeyer’s controversial onstage speeches has now led to legal proceedings. During a performance in Dortmund in February 2026, the singer spoke of “right-wing rats and right-wing racists” and said: “We stand together until they disappear back into the holes they came from.”
A man subsequently filed a criminal complaint, saying Grönemeyer had been referring to the AfD and its voters. Dortmund prosecutors opened an investigation on suspicion of incitement to hatred.
On his 2019 Neon Summer Tour, Rea Garvey did not merely interrupt his concerts to deliver political statements of his own. He also featured Greta Thunberg, already controversial at the time and since exposed as an antisemite, on the big screen. Audiences were shown an excerpt from Thunberg’s speech at the UN climate conference in Katowice, Poland.
The then 15-year-old accused politicians and business leaders of clinging to the existing growth model despite the climate crisis. She said civilization was being sacrificed so that a small number of people could continue making vast amounts of money. Garvey paired the political statement with the song Through the Eyes of a Child, weaving the message into the concert itself.
Politics on the International Stage
Bruce Springsteen, “The Boss”, has long combined crowd-pleasing music with political views that are rather less universally admired. Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images
The phenomenon is hardly confined to Germany. American singer Bruce Springsteen used his 2025 European tour to launch repeated attacks on Donald Trump. At a concert in Manchester, he described the administration as “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” and called on the audience to speak out in defense of democracy.
At a subsequent concert in Berlin, his political speeches were translated for the German audience on the big screens. People had paid for music and got left-wing politics thrown in as well.
Billie Eilish spoke out in support of killing unborn children at the Austin City Limits festival in Texas in 2021. She told the audience that she had initially considered canceling her performance before delivering the slogan “My body, my fucking choice!” The message “Bans Off Our Bodies” appeared on screens around the stage.
British singer Morrissey has incorporated his animal-rights views directly into his concerts for years. During performances of Meat Is Murder, he shows slaughterhouse footage on screen. At one London concert, audience members were even checked for meat products on entry, according to the Guardian.
US rapper Macklemore openly displayed his antisemitism by starting the chant “Free, free Palestine” and encouraging the audience to repeat it.
Roger Waters might have felt particularly at home in Macklemore’s crowd. The former Pink Floyd frontman has repeatedly been accused of antisemitism and has made anti-Israel politics a recurring feature of his shows. In emails from 2010 published by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, Waters proposed scrawling the antisemitic slur “dirty kyke” on an inflatable pig used at his concerts, alongside phrases including “follow the money”, and suggested “bombing” audiences with confetti shaped like swastikas, Stars of David, dollar signs and other symbols.
The Message Is Left-Wing
What stands out is that these statements are predominantly left-wing: dismissal of concerns about domestic security and migration, hostility to economic growth, attacks on Trump, support for vegetarianism and abortion and, of course, opposition to Israel. Entertainment is no longer the main focus. Instead, a moral, political or social message takes precedence.
This impulse is hardly new within the cultural left. One of its more intellectually ambitious precedents can be found in Germany.
The idea that art should not merely entertain its audience but also instruct it has deep roots in theater history, with Bertolt Brecht among its most prominent exponents. Brecht wanted to use entertainment as a vehicle for insight. His epic theater was intended to prevent audiences from simply identifying emotionally with the characters.
The alienation effect was intended to create distance. Spectators were meant to observe, compare and recognize that social conditions could be changed. Brecht therefore spoke of theater as a kind of “teaching institution”, while insisting that it should also give pleasure. For him, instruction and entertainment were not opposites, but complementary.
Brecht may not be the direct inspiration for political preaching at concerts. That would be far-fetched. Yet the political left’s tendency to lecture at every opportunity found an intellectually ambitious expression in Brecht and a rather more irritating one among modern musicians.
Anyone who has paid for music might reasonably find the political barrage inappropriate. The famous German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki once put it this way: “If you want to hear something particularly stupid, you only have to ask a writer for his political opinion.”
There is no reason why musicians should be any different.
