On April 28th, the band Juli will release their new album “Der Sommer ist über” (“The summer is over”). More than nine years after the release of their last studio album, the musicians are back. In May, Juli will be able to experience her first major tour of Germany since 2015. In an interview with the news agency spot on news, front woman Eva Briegel reveals how the band has managed to survive for over 20 years, how they deal with the pressure to succeed and why touring life is different today.
Eva Briegel: The secret is the same as in a long partnership: just don’t break up. If you have a common goal, not all problems can be solved, but at some point you will be more relaxed about them. Nevertheless, you always have to decide for each other, after all we work creatively and differences of opinion are part of the process. We feel the same way as the listener: one loves, the other hates a new idea. And then there’s a bang.
Briegel: Like everyone who works creatively, we always want to develop further. If we’ve done something before, we can quickly get bored. Nevertheless, it was important to me that all the new songs also work live on stage, which means that what sounds good on the album can also be performed well in our regular line-up with two guitars, a bass and drums. For example, the guys sing the choirs live that I sang in the studio. They shouldn’t come off the assembly line.
Briegel: There are more and more fantastic bands and solo artists singing in German. That’s a great development. In the past, German was a genre of its own, but today there are German texts in every category. I think it’s great, it means that hits, rock and pop aren’t lumped together so quickly. In addition, the quality increases significantly and idiosyncrasies emerge. There are funny lyrics, enigmatic, associative, aggressive, cryptic. That’s great.
Briegel: The topic of mental health is now dealt with relatively openly by people who are in the public eye. It’s good that taboos are broken and things can be discussed openly. It is important to note that psychological stress is a highly personal matter. Personally, I would prefer talking to a therapist to social media.
Briegel: I maintain that it is a question of perception. When I think of Bryan Adams, I think of “Summer of 69”. When it comes to doctors, I think of Westerland. But if I then think a thought or two further, I can think of about ten other good songs by the band. Our fans also love completely different songs, for example “We Both”, “Dieses Leben”, the electronic songs from the third album, and so on. We see what pieces are used to underline clips on social media, for example on Tik Tok, which is very interesting for us.
Briegel: We are actually musicians 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But not everything we do musically gets out there. Breaks are more likely to occur in the perception of the press or the public. Music is just part of it for me.
Briegel: Of course, things didn’t go so well for us sometimes. That’s inevitable when you suddenly go from zero to 100 and only live in the tour bus. Just physically, touring is very, very exhausting. But this life was always our dream and we enjoyed it very much. We’re just trying not to miss so much, keeping an eye on our friends and families. That’s also a theme of the band: being present, not missing the moment, not sinking into thoughts of yesterday or tomorrow.
Briegel: Oh, there are always arguments about questions of taste. It starts with the music and ends with band photos, videos, or which T-shirts get which colors in the merch shop. We solve this in the traditional way through discussions, and sometimes whoever has the longest breath wins (laughs).
Briegel: We play longer and drink less alcohol… thank goodness the shops are smaller these days and I like that it brings you closer to people again. We will probably pay a little more attention to our health, after all none of us should get sick. Otherwise, probably not much has changed. We used to like to play Kniffel in the lunch break (laughs).
Briegel: A long band life, another five albums, playing open air in the sunset, and an audience that goes further with us. And one or the other music show on TV wouldn’t be bad either. How about a remake of Top of the Pops, for example?
