History Music / Kraftwerk

Their songs mainly have to do with technology ("Kraftwerk" is German for "Power Plant"). Their gimmick basically was that they were robots; Kraftwerk will often put on concerts and give interviews through robotic replicas of themselves. The robots became less and less human-like over the years.

* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: Ralph Hutter has disowned their first three albums as [[OldShame "prehistoric"]], and thus they will never be legally reprinted.
** Although it seems that Hutter has had a change of mind recently, with hints that they might be restored and made available sometime after they release another studio album.

* {{Trope 2000}}: The single Expo 2000, filled with repeating soundbytes of different voices saying "das einundzwanzigsten jahrhundert"/"the twenty-first century" throughout.

* MundaneMadeAwesome: Pocket Calculator

* LoopedLyrics[=/=]TitleOnlyChorus

* LoopedLyrics

** "The Robots": ''"Я твои слуга, я твои работник."'' [[spoiler: "I'm your slave, I'm your worker."]]

* RealSongThemeTune: Happened at least twice. For its initial 1983-1990 run, the {{Edutainment}} show ''Newton's Apple'' used "Ruckzuck" (from their long-disowned debut album) as its theme (it was replaced for the home soundtrack due to licensing issues), and the ''SaturdayNightLive'' sketch "Sprockets" used a sped up version of "Electric Café"'s first couple of seconds.

* ReclusiveArtist: They rarely give interviews. They usually uses dummies or custom-made robots for promo photo shoots instead of themselves. All we know about their studio is its name. They are also extremely hard to contact with. For example, their studio telephone didn't have a ringer because they considered it a "noise pollution" during recording. If you really wanted to contact them they would instruct you to precisely call at a certain time, and Ralf Hütter would answer the call himself despite there was no phone ring.
** Allegedly, Chris Martin of Coldplay contacted them (through their lawyers) to request permission to sample "Computerliebe..." and got just a piece of paper with "Yes" written on it.

** Hütter suffered a cycling accident that left him in a coma during the initial sessions for ''Techno Pop'' (the album that became ''Electric Café''), and Karl Bartos once mentioned that the first thing Hütter said after waking up was "Where's my bicycle?" (Hütter dismissed this as untrue.)

* BilingualBonus: At least among the songs not in German or translated to English.
** "The Robots": ''"Ya tvoi sluga, ya tvoi rabotnik."'' [[spoiler: "I'm your slave, I'm your worker."]]
** "Dentaku" is "Pocket Calculator" translated into Japanese.

** [[FridgeHorror "It's in the air, for you and me."]]

* ReclusiveArtist: They rarely give interviews. They usually uses dummies or custom-made robots for promo photo shoots instead of themselves. They are also extremely hard to contact with. For example, their studio telephone didn't have a ringer because they considered it a "noise pollution" during recording. If you really wanted to contact them they would instruct you to precisely call at a certain time, and Ralf Hütter would answer the call himself despite there was no phone ring.
** They are pretty seclusive, and their original studio was located in the middle of an industrial district in Düsseldorf. The Other Wiki has a couple of anecdotes on that, attributing the phone story to [[TheSmiths John Marr]] and how [[ColdPlay Chris Martin]] contacted them through their lawyers to ask for permission to use a sample of "Computerliebe"... receiving a piece of paper in hand-writing that only said "yes". So... ja.
** Nobody really knows what's in their studio Kling Klang Studios either, as the band members are very secretive about it. One wonders if its something like a SupervillainLair.
*** It is. They're building an army of robots to [[TakeOverTheWorld take over the world]].

** Hütter suffered a cycling accident that left him in a coma during the initial sessions for ''Techno Pop'' (the album that became ''Electric Café''), and Karl Bartos once mentioned that the first thing Hütter said after waking up was "Where's my bicycle?"

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Kraftwerk.jpg
[[caption-width:331: The classic lineup, from left to right: Wolfgang Flür, Karl Bartos, Florian Schneider, Ralf Hütter]]

!Tropes

** The Chinese film ''MasterOfTheFlyingGuillotine'' uses "Mitternacht" and "Morgenspaziergang" off of the ''Autobahn'' album as most of its {{BGM}}.

* FaceOfTheBand: Ralf and Florian, the co-founders of the band. Until Florian left in 2008.

* SampledUp: Most people never recognize it when bands sample from Kraftwerk, but it happens a lot. A lot of Industrial and EBM acts do it, and it occasionally crops up in hip-hop as well.

* ''Electric Café'' (1986) [[hottip:*: It was originally named ''Techno Pop'', and was rereleased in 2009 with that title.]]

* ''Die Mensch Maschine'' (1978) [[hottip:*: An English version was released titled "The Man Machine".]]

* ''Electric Café'' (1986)

* PoeticJustice: 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 broke his leg - in a cycling accident.

--> ''Sellafield-2 will produce 7.5 tons of plutonium every year. [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill 1.5 kilogram of plutonium make a nuclear bomb.]] Sellafield-2 will release the same amount of radioactivity into the environment as [[GoingCritical Chernobyl]] every 4.5 years. One of these radioactive substances, Krypton-85, will cause death and skin cancer.''

* ProtestSong: "Radioactivity." Later live versions, and the version from the 1991 album The Mix, make it an explicitly anti-nuclear anthem.

* {{Synthesizeritis}}: The trope arguably wouldn't exist without them.

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