YMMV / Kraftwerk

• Accidental Innuendo: The heavy breathing on "Tour de France" sounds a tad too, er, passionate to be an out-of-breath cyclist.
• Anvilicious: The Mix's version of "Radioactivity". Apparently it was created when Ralf got pissed off when activists in England and North America accused the original version of being a pro-nuclear song.
• Awesome Music:
  • Most fans agree that Autobahn through Computer World represent their best work. However, Electric Café and Tour de France Soundtracks, their final albums, are often viewed as good albums within the fanbase despite being less influential than their preceding albums.
  • Then there's the entirety of Trans-Europe Express, which is widely considered to be Kraftwerk's masterpiece and their most influential album, helping to spearhead electro, house and hip hop.
  • Even though the band has disowned them, there's still some great stuff on their first albums, especially the Krautrock jamming on Kraftwerk or the soothing sounds of Ralf und Florian.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • "Intermission", "News", and "The Voice of Energy", all from Radio-Activity. "Intermission" only serves as an interlude into "News", an avant-garde piece comprised of various samples of Ralf's voice, while "The Voice of Energy" is a Badass Boast from the voice of energy that serves as a Shout-Out to the Voice of America radio station.^note (who's German broadcasts began with "Hier spricht die Stimme aus Amerika", hence "The Voice of Energy" beginning with "Hier spricht die Stimme der Energie") All three come out of nowhere and have barely anything to do with the rest of the album other sharing the "radio" theme.
  • During one of the verses on the German version of "Das Model"/"The Model", after Ralf sings "Sie trinkt in Nachtclubs immer Sekt", a man randomly shouts "KORREKT!", and then Ralf returns to singing like nothing happened seconds later. According to Word of God, the man was a waiter at a discothèque the group frequented who always served champagne to new visitors, and would often greet them with "Hallöchen! Sekt? Korrrrrrrekt!", hence why he was brought in to record that one word, which, along with the preceding verse, helped form a reference to his catchphrase.
• Covered Up:
  • "Das Model"/"The Model" must have some kind of record for most covered into different genres song:
    • A lot of young Rammstein fans might know it from Rammstein's cover "Das Modell".
    • Hardcore American Alternative Rock fans might know it from the Big Black cover on Songs About Fucking.
    • The Residents fans might know it from the Snakefinger cover.
    • Latin Americans might know it from the Speedy Techno Remake in Spanish "La Modelo" ("The Model") by Argentinian Clota Lanzetta.^note Lanzetta wasn't a professional singer, but a public relationist for celebrities and TV personalities, but nonetheless also made covers of other synthpop songs, such as New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle".
  • Likewise, the riff from "Computer Love" is better known as the riff from Coldplay's "Talk".
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • According to David Buckley's biography of the band, Kraftwerk: Publikation, Wolfgang was this in the 1980s, due to being perceived as "the cute one" of the group.
  • Karl is one due to his musical talent, status as the Only Sane Man of the classic lineup (stemming from his autobiography), and his sheer Adorkableness.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With the Daft Punk fandom. Both fandoms share a love of electronic music, and the overlap between the two is significant.
  • With The Wiggles fandom, of all bands.
  • With the Devo fandom. Both fandoms have a good overlap, and both bands are often seen as "underrated" by their respective fandoms.
  • With the Einstürzende Neubauten fandom. Both fandoms are dedicated to experimental (West) German bands. It's fairly common on sites like Tumblr to see people get into one band via the other.
  • While not considered goth music, many goths will acknowledge Kraftwerk's contribution to the creation of the coldwave genre, and their music gets occasional plays at goth night clubs.
  • With David Bowie, especially fans of Station to Station and the Berlin Trilogy. It helps that Kraftwerk was a major musical influence during this phase of Bowie's career.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Kraftwerk seem to be one out of two explicitly German bands well-known in the United States. The other one is Rammstein.
  • Kraftwerk are also cult favorites in the United Kingdom, as they influenced Britain's synth-pop scene. Andy McCluskey saw them live when he was 16, and he was so amazed, he decided to start his own electronic band: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. They even named their second album Organisation after Kraftwerk's precursor band of the same name. In both the U.S. and U.K. they were considered the electronic band for a long time.
  • Not only are they popular in Japan, for instance with Yellow Magic Orchestra namedropping them as a major influence on their early-1980s appearance in Soul Train, but as you can hear in Dentaku on the Minimum-Maximum live album, Japanese audiences are far more excited in Kraftwerk concerts than audiences in most other countries that tend to treat the live performances like art shows. Kraftwerk has also returned the affection numerous times, such as with their 2012 No Nukes festival performance of Radio-Activity with the revised lyrics to The Mix version.
• Growing the Beard: The albums Autobahn and Radio-Activity are where Kraftwerk really began to develop their style, with Autobahn being somewhat of a transition between their earlier ambient krautrock style and their later synthpop and electro work.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The single "Tour de France" was supposed to have been issued as the first single from the album Techno Pop, before the production work on the album had been completed. The album was shelved when Ralf ended up in a coma from a cycling accident.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One common contemporary remark about the band is that a lot of the time, all four of them look very similar to Sheldon Cooper. Fitting, given how Jim Parsons reportedly based his portrayal of Sheldon in part on the band.
• LGBT Fanbase: Pretty much comes with the territory of being a 70s/80s synth act.
• Memetic Mutation: the Coke Can Incident of 1981.^note While travelling in Poland during the Computer World Tour, Karl threw an unopened can of Coke at Wolfgang's head in an act of irritation. For some fans, this incident is hilarious, given how Unintentionally Unsympathetic Wolfgang portrays himself as being while recounting it.
• Narm Charm: Songs like "The Robots" and "Pocket Calculator" run on it.
• Older Than They Think: No, Daft Punk are not the first electronic band posing as robots. They are in fact directly giving homage to this band.
• Replacement Scrappy: Some fans refuse to acknowledge the post-1987 additions the band^note that is, Fritz Hilpert, Fernando Abrantes, Henning Schmit, Stefan Pfaffe, and Falk Grieffenhagen as true members of Kraftwerk; however, there's not much fuzz about these members outside of that bubble, especially among fans who weren't around for the classic lineup in the first place. This is parodied with the Facebook group "Christian Dads against Falk Grieffenhagen", who consistently (and intentionally) mix Falk up with Florian.
• Sampled Up: Most people never recognise when bands sample from Kraftwerk, but it happens a lot. A lot of Industrial and EBM acts do it, and their drum beats crop up in hip-hop, especially from the '80s and early '90s all the time.
  • Perhaps the most famous sample up is Coldplay's use of "Computer Love/Computerlieb"'s main melody in their song "Talk".
  • The Gregorian chant-like choir from "Uranium" being sampled on New Order's "Blue Monday" and Underworld's "Dark & Long (Dark Train)".
  • Fans of LCD Soundsystem will recognise synth lines from "Home Computer" and "The Robots" in "Disco Infiltrator" and "Get Innocuous!", respectively.
• Sequel Displacement: Autobahn. Justified in that the band's first three albums have been treated as Canon Discontinuity for several years due to their refusal to officially reissue them in order to not hurt their reputation as synth pioneers, so you'd be surprised how people, and even casual fans, would earnestly think that Autobahn is their debut album.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel:
  • "Morgenspaziergang", the final track of Autobahn. It translates to "Morning Walk", and appropiately enough, while the album's title track mimicked driving on a highway and the rest of the tracks mimicked (sometimes downright scary) night sounds, this track mimicks nature sounds one might hear while taking a morning walk, with the flutes even sounding like birds singing.
  • "Airwaves".
  • "Computer Love".
  • "Ohm Sweet Ohm" - particularly in live recordings; the depth of the synthesised organ makes it almost sound like a wedding song.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The live shows. Whether it's because they've changed the lineup (again), or because they changed the stage setup to the very impersonal four desks, or because the band prefers to play only The Mix versions of songs rather than the originals, it's a common opinion that contemporary Kraftwerk shows do not hold a candle to those of the 20th century—least of all to the Computer World Tour shows, which featured the band members roaming the stage and even utilizing small hand-held synths that a lucky member of the audience would be invited to play during "Pocket Calculator". This opinion's more notable holders include former band members Wolfgang Flür and Florian Schneider.
• Vindicated by History:
  • Radio-Activity is often considered one of Kraftwerk's weaker efforts, despite it being their first fully electronic album and the title track being an integral part of their stage show, but its fusion of melodic pop and use of early sampling technology have become more applauded in the 21st century.
  • Electric Café, aka Techno-Pop, was poorly received at the time, and is still not considered one of Kraftwerk's better albums, but it is now regarded by many to be quite a good instrumental hip-hop and electro album, showing Kraftwerk embracing their music's popularity within the hip-hop and electronic dancing scenes of the mid-80s and producing music specifically for the purpose of breakdancing. It being a good gateway album for people not drawn in by Kraftwerk's normally rigid sound certainly helps.

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