About this song
- “Links 2 3 4” (also spelled “Links 2-3-4”, English: “Left 2 3 4”) is a song by the German Neue Deutsche Härte band Rammstein. It was released as the second single from their third studio album “Mutter” on 14 May 2001. The song became a top 40 hit in Germany, Austria, and Finland. The song uses military marching cadence language in its structure and title. “Links, zwo, drei, vier” (“Left, two, three, four”) is a standard marching command used by German-speaking drill instructors to keep soldiers in step, with “left” referring to the left foot. The form “zwo” is an older variant of “zwei” (two), used in military and telephone contexts to avoid confusion with “drei” (three). The title reflects this militaristic framing and also references earlier left-wing revolutionary musical traditions, including “Einheitsfrontlied”, written by Bertolt Brecht for the Communist Party of Germany in the 1930s and later popularised in the German Democratic Republic. The lyrics were written in response to public accusations that the band had fascist or Nazi sympathies. In contrast, the song presents the band as politically left-wing, with the chorus stating that others want the narrator’s heart “on the right”, while it “beats on the left”, implying left-wing political alignment. The music video uses CGI animation depicting an ant colony representing left-wing groups and beetles representing Nazis. The ants are shown engaging in human-like activities such as watching television, playing football, and dancing. The band is shown performing on a cinema screen, alongside a modified version of their logo featuring two crossed hammers. In the narrative of the video, beetles attack and kill members of the ant colony, after which surviving ants regroup underground and launch a counterattack, symbolically representing collective resistance and victory. . User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply. — lastfm
