Summerstage - Clueso & Tom Odell

Clueso has stood on the biggest stages and released eight gold and platinum albums. In 2016, the musician from Erfurt dared a "new beginning". Since then, he has released two number one albums and played a sold-out hall tour with over 100,000 spectators. In 2020, Clueso entered a new creative phase with songs like "Tanzen", "Flugmodus" or the Capital Bra feature "Andere Welt".

After a unique one-and-a-half-year stretch with no less than seven single hits, "Album" was released on October 1, 2021. That's right: the ninth Clueso album is not only one, it is also called so. Perfect title, because: So consistently Clueso has never brought his artistic vision to the point.

Clueso wrote the 19 songs on "Album" individually and produced them together with producers and fellow musicians from various fields. There was no prefabricated framework here, no master plan. Clueso simply set sail with his musical Noah's Ark and took something from every genre on board.

Tom Odell has never conformed to the image people have of him. "People have perceived my music as a 'major label creation,'" the singer-songwriter says with a roll of his eyes. In the early days of his career, perhaps because he appeared on the scene armed with a Brits Critics' Choice Award, an instantly ubiquitous single ('Another Love') and a major-label deal, critics doubted his authenticity - as if his knack for a good hook was somehow a mark against him. Even his 2021 album Monsters - on which he pushes boundaries, experiments with new sounds and talks about his issues with crippling anxiety - was dismissed by some as an attempt to stay relevant. "I don't care if people don't like my music, but if someone says, 'This is a major-label creation,' I'm like, 'You have no idea how hard I worked on this,'" Odell says. Besides, no one seemed to know where to put it. Alternative people think I'm pop, and pop people think I'm alternative..."

Odell is a masterful pianist. In every piece, the piano is elegant and expansive - hopeful one moment, melancholy the next, always deeply moving. Odell drew inspiration from composers Erik Satie and Philip Glass, and he and songwriting partner Laurie interspersed Studio Ghibli films in the writing to convey not only the "beautiful landscapes and vistas" of those anime, but also "the sense of depravity and sadness."


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