RTLzwei is starting with a new music show: At “Music Drive In”, candidates drive their cars into a drive-in street in the Ruhr area, request a song and perform it as creatively and enthusiastically as possible in front of the jury. At the end there is a sum of money. The jury consists of Guildo Horn (59), Loona (48) and Prince Damien (32). “I thought the idea of the show was super crazy, but also super interesting and funny,” Prince Damien said in an interview with spot on news. “In an Asian country, it’s already a total hype. And I thought, that fits me like ass on bucket.”
“I was asked to do this jury work and we first shot a pilot,” says Guildo Horn. “I went expecting it to be pretty trashy, which I always like up to a point, but then it gets on my balls. Turns out, I actually found it surprisingly good. We were right good people there.” Certainly 90 percent of the candidates weren’t just fun candidates, but tried to “conjure up” something really good out of the car. “With the first two acts we saw, we didn’t know where we were going. That was a good average,” says Prince Damien. “But from the third we knew that it wasn’t just a bit of gibberish and karaoke, but that they really brought something out onto the stage, or rather from the car.”
The nice thing about the format is “that you get to know people in a very short time,” adds Horn. “It’s not like a classic casting format, it’s much faster, it’s musical speed dating! A car pulls up, we talk, you find out something about the person sitting in there, and then they drop their pants and starts to perform. It’s very intimate, you have to have the courage to do it.” There were people there, some of whom had never been on stage before. “I thought that was so respectable and I often had goosebumps. We saw more than 120 cars rushing past us while we were working and we still didn’t have enough. In the evening we said we could still do it because it’s just so great.”
The two jurors met for the first time during the format. “I was star-struck,” says Prince Damien. “For me, Guildo is an icon. When I was a little boy, my grandfather had a CD of his at home that said ‘Guildo hat dich lieb’. Every time I see Gildo now, I associate the time with it my grandfather. He’s like family, we hit it off straight away.” Although he has so much more “on the log” than himself, Horn received him “totally at eye level”. “The best thing about Guildo is that he’s down to earth and free of pain, you can talk to him about anything.”
Prince Damien is “an extremely pleasant colleague and very suitable for a team,” says Guildo Horn. “We also laugh a lot together. I thought the whole time, there must be a catch, people must have abysses, it can’t be that he’s so nice (laughs).” If you spend more than a week together so intensively, “then you get to know each other incredibly well within a very short time. It’s great fun to be with him. He’s a really great guy. But we’re still talking about a sensible haircut ( laughs).”
When you work together on a jury, “it’s really important that you give each other space,” continues Guildo Horn. “In our business there are a lot of first-person shooters who just start shooting and you have to fight for your place. In our constellation, that doesn’t exist.” Fellow juror Loona (48) let both “run quite well” and “knows how to slow us down at the crucial moment,” says Horn.
And what do the two pay attention to in the performances of the candidates? “I’m totally the performance guy and I’m a team entertainer. I like it when it’s colorful and wild,” explains Prince Damien. “If I feel entertained, can perhaps laugh and the tones are right from time to time, then the person has already convinced me.” If one of the participants then performs a song by the No Angels, “he’s already won, then it can be crooked and crooked,” explains Prince Damien with a laugh. “I come from live music and live on stage,” says Guildo Horn. “So I really need it. And it has to be authentic. I don’t like fake cheerfulness or fake pathos at all.”
As a “DSDS” winner, he knows “exactly how candidates feel. You have sweaty hands, you know it’s about something,” explains Prince Damien. “As a juror, I try to take away people’s fears. I feel responsible for them doing well.” The advantage is that the candidates in the car “feel a bit at home anyway. You can relax more, just accelerate and have fun”. As a juror, he wanted “regardless of whether I think it’s good or not, people go out with their heads held high and not like beaten dogs,” says Guildo Horn. “It has to be human. But I’ve also decided to just say what I feel. You’re in the situation and it just flows out of you. Because: I have an opinion about music, I don’t need much about it think.”
The first of 15 episodes “Music Drive In” can be seen on Monday, January 30 at 5:05 p.m. on RTLzwei. The format runs from Monday to Friday, and all episodes are available on RTL seven days in advance.
