Star Tim Bendzko musical highlight of the WMTRC 2023 Innsbruck-Stubai closing ceremony

Last updated on 14.06.2023

A terrific week of World Championships races with top performances and great early-summer conditions came to an end on Saturday evening. On the festival grounds outside the Tiroler Landestheater enthusiastic fans applauded the star act and the 1,300 international athletes for their outstanding performance over the past few days.

Tim Bendzko had his great breakthrough in 2011 when his single “Nur noch kurz die Welt retten” (“Just To Quickly Save The World”) sold over half a million copies and was awarded with platinum – just like his first album “Wenn Worte meine Sprache wären” (“If Words Were My Language”), from which the single was released, shortly thereafter. It was his first big hit and it took Tim Bendzko to the pinnacle of German pop.

Other award-winning albums and singles followed, all of which at some point in time topped the charts with songs like “Unter die Haut” (“Under The Skin”),, “Keine Maschine” (“Not A Machine”) or “Hoch” (“High”), a piece dealing with sports and which Bendzko dedicated to the WMTRC 2023 participants at his performance in Innsbruck.

An athletic savior of the world
“My whole childhood consisted of sports,” says Bendzko, who attended a sports school in Berlin, has run marathons and half marathons himself and takes his road bike with him on his tours. He keeps it in his camping van, which is his home while on tour.  His camping spot in Tyrol was in Wildermieming in the Tyrolean Oberland, a sunny and scenic plateau that he explored by bike. Just before Corona he also took up skiing and he “enjoys coming to Tyrol”.

“Trail running is definitely a sport that I would enjoy a lot,” says Bendzko, who loves mountains and also incorporated them into the lyrics of his new song “Wer rettet die Welt für mich?” (“Who Is Going To Save The World For Me?”).

“Come on, let’s move on to the mountains. It’s way too hot here anyway. Let’s sit on top of a glacier and drink some sparkling wine on ice ,” he sings.

“Wer rettet die Welt für mich?” can certainly be seen as a testament to current times, a continuation of the original song “Nur noch kurz die Welt retten” (“Just To Quickly Save The World”). It is a song critical of climate change, one of 15 new tracks on Tim Bendzko’s fifth album with the title “April”.

New album “April:
Why April? Because, according to Bendzko, “just as the weather in April changes constantly, the years in which the new album came into being were also characterized by unpredictable ups and downs”. In “April”, Bendzko sings about chaos and new beginnings, with the new album containing “feel-good songs” as well as melodies and lyrics that revolve around fears and courage. In terms of musical style, too, the album is different from what the audience has come to know as being typical for Tim Bendzko. It has a more electronic feel to it and is faster, sounding more like club and less like campfire.

European tour in summer and autumn
In the coming weeks and months, the new album will be presented as part of a European tour, with planned gigs in Austria, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. And after that? “I don’t know yet,” says the likable musician. “Maybe I’ll try trail running.”