50 years of summer hit: Can Rudi Carrell’s summer anthem still sing today?

One of the sunniest hits in German music history was written on a dark night. On one evening in 1975, moderator Rudi Carrell sat in the kitchen in his farm near Bremen. Opposite him: the songwriter and sketch writer Thomas Woitkewitsch. Under the table: a box of beer. And Carrell said: “Now come up with something.”

A box of beer and a flash of inspiration

The next morning the box was empty – but there was a hit that should last for the decades: “When will it get summer again?”. In it, Carrell sang the longing for a summer “as he used to be”. What meant in the coordinate system of the Lower Show: Hot and rain low. 50 years ago, on May 5, 1975, the song joined the German charts.

Today, five decades later, the song still sounds like a light summer breeze and carefree holidays – and yet a slightly different wind is blowing. The line “When will it be really summer again?” Has something painful and beautiful for 2025 ears. Why is that?

Maybe you have to look at the story of the origin first. “When will it be really summer again?” is a cover of the song “City of New Orleans”, written by Steve Goodman, who at that time actually had highly political in mind. In the text, he criticized a decision by the government of US President Richard Nixon, who allowed the railway companies to shut down unprofitable routes. That hit many poor people.

But Carrell, who died in 2006, did not want to have it politically. Especially since he probably knew the catchy melody from another version of the Netherlands. His approach was different. “He said: man, there are songs about food, there are songs about love. But there is no meteorological song yet,” copywriter Thomas Woitkewitsch recalls in an interview with the dpa. “And then he said: We’re doing something with summer.”

The SPD was (maybe)

Carrell even pulled this rather apolitical approach on the recording. The stanza became famous: “Winter was the fall of the century, there was snow only over a thousand meters. My milk man says: This climate here, who is surprised? If you listen exactly, you will notice how Carrell breathes a kind of salmon sigh into the microphone – as an audible distance from your own punch line. “He was not a cabaret artist,” says Woitkewitsch. Carrell had nevertheless thought of the line.

The Dutch – notorious for his nose – should have suspected that he might have succeeded with the song. “When he went to the studio, he said: Thomas could be something like Bing Crosby’s” White Christmas “,” says Woitkewitsch. So an immortal classic.

Curiously, he competed with a second German version that the Brave Western hit singer Ronny had recorded. While Ronny (“once passes the most beautiful summer”) came quite aisy, Carrell looked light -footed. The thing was quickly decided.

Between weather report and wishful thinking

Success also hung up with the fact that the Dutch took up a feeling that was present at the time. With his lawsuit, he hit a meteorological nerve in 1975.

“I looked into the data: in 1974 was one of the coldest summer we had in Germany,” says climatologist and meteorologist Andreas Walter, who is often asked about the evergreen because of his profession (but also on “Raining Men” by the Weather Girls, as he says). “In this respect, the song was probably justified at the time.”

If you look at the text today, a different feeling can also spread. At that time you had to understand lines like “There were up to 40 degrees in the shade, we had to be economical with the water” as a humorous exaggeration. 50 years later not necessarily.

“In the meantime, we are really far away from the temperatures, such as those who were in the 1960s in the 1960s,” explains meteorologist Walter. The summer have become significantly warmer. “In recent years we have also had a precipitation deficit, the soils were sometimes very dry”. This leads to an increased risk of forest fires and low water levels in the rivers.

“The picture that carrrell outlines in his text is certainly not the ideal image of a summer that we have today – with a view to climate change -” says the climatologist. “When the song came out in 1975, it was certainly due to the fact that there were actually cooler phases in the mid-1970s. But in general I would say: Carrell was overhauled by reality.”

Should you “When will it get really summer again?” So prefer to motten? This in turn would misjudge the core of the song. Carrell may have sung about the weather – but actually it was about the people, for whom everything was always better anyway. And they remain up to date.

Complete Woitkewitsch himself has little problems with the longing for the super heat anyway. “For me, summer cannot be hot enough,” says the 81-year-old.