Berlin, July 8th, 2026 (The Berlin Spectator) – German music might be seen as terrible, and rightly so if we look at Schlager, the worst German-language Pop songs ever. Their lyrics suck. So do their arrangements, their entire approach and usually the “artists” who sing them. There is awful German Pop music sung in English as well.
But there are German composers, arrangers, instrumentalists and vocalists who did deliver quality sounds. Some of them still do. Ludwig van Beethoven is a good example. So are other Classical Music composers. There is the Rock band BAP that presented good songs in Kölsch, the German accent spoken in Cologne. Peter Herbolzheimer was a brilliant Bigband leader, Klaus Doldinger a legendary saxophone hero. Also there are famous acts such as The Scorpions, Tokio Hotel, Nena and a few others. The list goes on and on.
There is one name we need to mention as well: Ten years ago, in March of 2016, Roger Cicero died of a stroke. He was 45. This singer did something nobody had done in decades: He paired German lyrics with Swing and Bigband arrangements. His album “Männersachen” contained songs that dealt with the battle of the sexes in an ironic fashion. Die-hard feminists hated them, but the audience Roger Cicero gathered with those tunes was huge.
From that recording, he got to sing “Frauen regier’n die Welt” (“Women Rule the World”) at the European Song Contest (ESC) in 2007. He finished 19th of 24. Well, the ESC is not exactly about quality. If it was, 90 percent of contestants would have been disqualified, while Cicero would have won the 2007 edition.
Roger Cicero was a mixture between a German Frank Sinatra and a just as German Michael Franks mit a side order of Sammy Davis. Once he pulled through with this idea of his, the product could not have been more convincing. He sang good and partially funny lyrics in a Bigband setting. In a way, he got the 1950s back, but managed to make them sound contemporary.
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I met him once, when he did a gig I booked for a German Jazz-Funk act that was run by the pianist Nils Gessinger in Berlin some 23 years ago. That night, he did a great job on songs that were not his, meaning he probably rehearsed them the night before the concert. And he turned out to be a kind and funny guy backstage. He seemed shy to me as well, but I did not know him well.
After “Männersachen”, he recorded a series of five albums. Then, on March 24th, 2016, he suffered a massive stroke that killed him. His father Eugen Cicero had died of the same kind of stroke at age 57, in 1997. A few months before he passed away, Roger Cicero gave an interview in which he talked about being afraid of dying early, like his father. This fear became reality.
Roger Cicero, a true Pop and Vocal Jazz legend, was born in West Berlin on July 6th, 1970. He grew up in the beautiful Grunewald district. Eugen, his dad, was a Romanian pianist who also found his niche by interpreting Classical Music the jazzy way. Roger had a half-sister named Babette who died of a heroin overdose at age 14 in 1977. This drug death was mentioned in the movie “Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo” and shocked West Germany. Babsi, as her friends called her, was the youngest heroin victim at the time.
At age 11, Roger Cicero was the support act for the Swiss Chanson singer Helen Vita. He was still a child when he appeared on TV singing with a Bigband. When he was 18, he received a profound music education, including singing, piano and guitar at Germany’s Hohner-Konservatorium. While he did, he sang with Eugen Cicero’s trio and with the Federal Youth Jazz Orchestra conducted by none other than Peter Herbolzheimer (whom I also knew).
He went on to study in Hilversum (The Netherlands) and sang for the German Soul and Funk acts Soulounge and Jazzkantine as well as with yet another Bigband. In 2006, with “Männersachen”, his popularity exploded. Apart from “Frauen regier’n die Welt”, it includes an entire list of songs with convincing lyrics. Track number six is absolutely beautiful (yes, in spite of being sung in German). With “Wenn sie dich fragt” (“When She Asks You”), he took a Bossa Nova approach. This song is cute, in a good way.
On this album, Cicero sang about the idiot he was because he let her go and about Murphy’s law. He dedicated one tune to Berlin. Guess what song he must have used as the template: “New York, New York”. The next album, “Beziehungsweise”, contains more jazzy tunes. This time, the lyrics are even more emotional.
In the last years of his short life, Cicero also interpreted classics such as Van Morrison’s “Moondance” and Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”. A year before he was gone, he recorded a live album entitled “Cicero Sings Sinatra”. Yes, it’s all there, including “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “My Way”. Listening to that one for the first time, I came to the following conclusion: He was not really the German Sinatra in spite of people calling him that way.
You are Roger Cicero. You live on in your son, the memories of your family, friends and fans, as well as in your music. You are the gifted artist who should have lived.
