During an interview with Tony Webster on the Helloween Marathon ’03, Michael Weikath explained that the topic of The Tune was lobbies and interest groups that had a vested interest in creating war among the people. When writing the lyrics, he predominantly had in mind the conflict in Palestine.

The people of Palestine and Israel believe in the same god. They hate each other only because interest groups told them to. According to Weikath, this is the case with every war situation between countries of this world, not just the Middle East. Weikath believes that people don’t want to fight each other since the same eyes, the same flesh, and the same brains connect them all. They only fight because insidious people misguide them. As far as Weikath is concerned, war shouldn’t be necessary today. There were so many wars only because certain interest groups (which Weikath doesn’t describe any further) want to encourage conflict in order to profit from it.

Weikath personally says that after 40 years of his life, he has learned to not just accept this anymore. The warmongers could not impress him anymore. Through his experience of working in show business he found that he had to deal with a lot people that were in a way acting artificially and insincere. The politicians on TV were in his view ridiculous because he recognized how clumsy they were acting in front of the cameras, although they surely are used to public exposure. Weikath thinks the reason for this is that these people are weak characters. They were unable to convince him of anything because one could clearly see that they had no vision, and were even lacking any real ideology. And it is exactly these people who are, in Weikath’s, view responsible for the wars on earth. He thinks these characters are even weaker than the ones over whom they rule. All they did was impress the masses with their senseless gibberish. Weikath believes that if these kind of people were not in power then the world would be a more peaceful place.

The Tune itself does not only deal with this topic, but moreover, with the artificial, sensationalist news portrayed by certain sections of the media, which hinders people from developing their own view (”A template you can’t choose”). This is illustrated by the drawing for the track. It depicts a pumpkin-man in front of a huge wall of TV screens that show only scenes of war and violence. An interesting detail is the knife in one hand of the pumpkin-man. The logical conclusion of this is that this refers to Weikath’s idea of people being misguided by warmongers.

The first bridge embodies an assertion that it is not enough to just try and escape the exertion of the media’s influence. The implication is all too obvious: resist.

Another interesting part is the second verse. Here, two people are explicitly mentioned as the actual parties behind the war (”Two people are at war”). It remains unclear which people Weikath is aiming at. However, knowing that The Tune is about the conflict in Palestine, it could be that the two parties are the respective rulers of Israel and Palestine. Other allusions are possible of course, but most importantly in this case, is the emphasis on the two, no matter who they are, sharing the same dream of peace and harmony (”The dream they share of peace and harmony”), and praying to the one god. Consequently, it could be said that nothing divides them except their own opposing ideology. Weikath asserts that through their actions they have endangered their own souls (”Their souls exposed”), and it is here that we see Weikath’s religiosity become apparent, an aspect of his beliefs that shone trough on earlier compositions by him as well (Number One, Laudate Dominum).

The second bridge sounds quite cynical when Weikath focuses on people’s indifference when confronted with outrage in the media that is delivered as entertainment. We can shut off the horror with the remote control and make it disappear from our lives. But it will not cease to exist through that. Few think about the cruel news for long when they are not affected directly.

The chorus then expresses what is probably the main theme of the track: the manipulation of the masses, and the reduction of all news to a spectacle. In German there is saying ”It’s always the same tune” meaning ”It’s always the same old story”. Weikath appears, with this saying, to be suggesting that the media supplies cruel and shocking news to create fear and anxiety (”For those who share the fear”). No one is able to escape because the news floods every part of our lives (”On a frequency for you and me”). And this is Weikath’s grievance; he ascertains that if one is able to gather information only from orthodox sources, then there is no possibility to develop one’s own view of world events. Consequently, the public just stare at their TV screens without thinking about what’s behind the reports (”You stare but you can’t see”). Without knowing the background, and without even thinking about the intentions of parties involved in the conflict, no competent, or reflected view can be developed by the individual, and they are damned to blindly follow one-sided misrepresentations (”You hear and you agree”).

Where the previous verses dealt with commenting upon the problem, the third tells us to not to tolerate this situation. Instead, one should take a look around and begin to form an idea of what the world is like, and then perhaps one day it may be possible for mankind to govern itself by consensus of opinion (”Common ground”) rather than by hegemony. In so doing, those acting with ulterior motives – and Weikath unequivocally means the powers that be – would reveal themselves as failed conceited fools who were capable of summoning the apocalypse.

The call for the end their tyranny concludes the second bridge: ”Strike the last hour in their glass towers”. According to Weikath, the interest groups he writes about acted because of pure greed and lust for power (”Infinite lust”).

Thereafter, the chorus is repeated twice, whereby Weikath slightly changes the lyrics at the very end, through which he gives the text a new dimension. The implication is that the masses are addicted to the sensational news that was produced exactly for their kind of audience: ”For those who long to hear”. Knowing about the hypnosis of the masses, the manipulators feel comfortable with their sphere of influence and go on manipulating the people (”They wave and we agree”). Weikath evidently feels emotional about this topic, because he marks the men behind these manipulations as ”Freaks”.

Finally, a comparison of The Tune with other compositions that Weikath contributed to lyrically. The first one is ‘Guardians’ from the album Walls Of Jericho published in 1986. Besides that fact that the track is astonishingly similar to The Tune musically, there are also analogies inherent in the lyrics. For example, the central theme is essentially mass hypnosis with the difference of Weikath approaching the topic by describing a future anti-utopian society. In this society, citizens are drugged and enslaved by holy guardians. The people know war only from movies and have fully given in to the leadership of the guardians. Dissentients are hunted down and brainwashed. This society has given up freedom for security.

To the lyrics of the opening track of the album Better Than Raw (1998), Push, Weikath contributed at least parts. The lyrics of Push concentrate on the bombardment of the audience with cruel news. Just as in The Tune, it deals with people being habituated to the news because they are pre-occupied, but cannot prevent war. Contrary to The Tune, the sincerity of the news is questioned. The meaning lies on the manifest statement that one is given an untrue image of reality, all the more because most of these reports are made up to entertain by people in the background. This is a significant connection with The Tune; as it, too, wants people to resist the media’s influence on them. Push moreover tells us to free ourselves from the unconscious addiction to sensational news and start enjoying life.

Copyright: Treasurechest.de 2004
Author: Jan Mathis
Translated from German by: Jan Mathis / David Payne