Get Well Soon releases new album Amen

The sixth album...?” Konstantin Gropper mulls over the words carefully as he contemplates the imminent release of AMEN, his latest full-length release as GET WELL SOON. “What is there to say? It’s the pandemic album, of course!” His isn’t the first, and it won’t be the last, but AMEN – much of it written and recorded since the world was forced to shut down in early 2020 in his private basement and an isolated holiday home in the midst of the vineyards of Rhineland-Palatinate, in his German homeland –– takes its responsibilities seriously. Many artists, of course, used the time to adopt new musical approaches or dig deep into themselves, but Gropper found this self-analysis also led him to pondering the bigger social questions that the last two years – and the accompanying isolation – have provoked: the pros and cons of individualism, the good and bad that binds and divides us, the pursuit of happiness and the purpose of hope, and the wisdom of Chinese fortune-cookies. He emerged with a crucial realization, one that’s as surprising to him as it will be to others: he’s actually an optimist. It’s matters like these which dominate this magnificent record, but naturally in true Gropper style.

Also composer and producer behind three seasons of the hugely successful Netflix show How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast)’s fully scored music – he’s currently working on another Netflix series, too – and provided the score for renowned German director Detlev Buck’s Christmas Crossfire (2020).

My Home Is My Heart’ queries the validity of currently fashionable ideas about prioritizing self-identity: “Just be yourself and love yourself,” he memorably advises. "You have to accept me as I am" and "be yourself and love yourself as you are". In general, there is nothing to be said against this. However, this individualism must also be questioned, especially in the current situation, where it is being put to the test. Society thrives on interpersonal compromises and sometimes also on putting one's "personality" on the back burner. The philosopher Charles Taylor is one of the most important representatives of so-called "communitarianism". He sees in individualism or neoliberalism the "malaise of modernity". Through the urge for “self-realization" responsibility for the community is lost. He might have found confirmation for this in the pandemic.

"Making the best of yourself is the basic idea of coaching. "It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be" is a classic career advice book, especially in advertising by Paul Arden. It gathers quite a few cliché motivational sayings. As the title suggests, however, the main point is to invent an ideal image of oneself. Since nowadays, more than ever, everyone can and must invent an ideal image of oneself. Since nowadays, more than ever, everyone can and must invent their ideal image you can chase after it for the rest of your life”, Gropper grins.

Whether pop music is the appropriate forum to debate these profound issues may be to some a moot point. Not to Gropper, however. “What are songwriters if not the untutored social scientists of the little man?” he asks, albeit perhaps with an eyebrow quietly raised. “These days inspiration is on the streets, so why not scoop it up?”

Can we get an AMEN...?!

Listen to the album HERE

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