Max Raabe was born Matthias Otto in Lünen, Germany, in 1962, and trained as a classical baritone before reinventing himself as the singing voice of another era entirely. While studying in Berlin in the mid-1980s, he and a group of fellow students formed the Palast Orchester, building their repertoire out of German dance-hall and cabaret arrangements from the 1920s and 30s that they dug up in flea markets. He still fronts the band today, gliding into a poised falsetto with the deadpan calm of someone who has never once cracked a smile on purpose.
Raabe's version of "Kein Schwein ruft mich an" turned him into a national name in 1992, and he has spent the decades since moving comfortably between his own German-language songs and English standards by Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, playing Carnegie Hall more than once along the way. A songwriting partnership with Annette Humpe produced the platinum album "Küssen kann man nicht alleine" in 2011, and Berlin later awarded him its Order of Merit for the act he built almost by accident as a student.