A ghostly farewell that exists outside of time — neither ever, nor never, just an endless goodbye
"Goodbye" exists in a strange, liminal space — somewhere between ending and never ending. The song doesn't feel like a normal farewell. It feels like a goodbye spoken from inside a loop, where departure and return are the same thing. That quality made it the perfect theme for Netflix's Dark, a German series about time travel, fate, and the terrifying idea that everything that has happened will happen again.
Apparat — the solo project of German electronic artist Sascha Ring — created the instrumental with a sense of weightlessness, as if the music itself is floating between dimensions. The synths are warm but eerie, comforting but unsettling. And then Anja Plaschg's voice arrives — the Austrian artist known as Soap&Skin — and it's like hearing someone sing from the bottom of a well. Her voice is fragile and enormous at the same time, carrying words that seem to dissolve as she speaks them.
The central phrase — "neither ever, nor never, goodbye" — is deliberately paradoxical. It refuses the binary of forever and never. This goodbye isn't permanent and it isn't temporary. It's something else entirely — a state of constant leaving, constant parting, where the farewell itself becomes the relationship. For anyone who has lost someone — to death, to distance, to time — that paradox is achingly familiar. You never fully say goodbye. You just keep saying it, in different ways, for the rest of your life.
The song's association with Dark elevated it from an album deep cut to a cultural touchstone. Every episode opens with this music, training the viewer's brain to associate these sounds with mystery, dread, and the uncanny feeling that time is not what it seems. But the song works powerfully without the show — it captures the universal experience of farewell as something that never fully resolves.
What it means: This farewell isn't permanent ("never") and it isn't ongoing ("ever"). It exists in an impossible space between the two — a goodbye that can't be categorised.
Why it matters: It's the philosophical heart of the song. By rejecting both extremes, it captures the reality of loss: you never fully let go, and you never fully hold on.
What it means: A denial — this isn't really a goodbye, even though it feels like one. Perhaps because true goodbyes don't exist, or because this parting will be undone by time.
Why it matters: It introduces doubt into the farewell itself. Is this the end? Or just another loop?
What it means: The single word, repeated, stripped of context — just the act of leaving, spoken into emptiness.
Why it matters: The repetition transforms a common word into something ritual, almost sacred. Each "goodbye" carries a different weight.
Apparat (Sascha Ring) has been a central figure in Berlin's electronic music scene since the early 2000s, creating atmospheric, emotionally rich music that blurs the line between electronic and organic. "Goodbye" was originally released on his 2011 album The Devil's Walk, featuring Soap&Skin (Anja Plaschg), an Austrian artist known for her intense, operatic vocal style and dark artistic vision.
The song found its defining moment when it was chosen as the opening theme for Dark (2017–2020), Netflix's first German-language original series. Dark became a global phenomenon — a complex, multilayered narrative about four interconnected families in a small German town where children begin disappearing, revealing links across different time periods. The show's themes of cyclical time, determinism, and the impossibility of truly saying goodbye aligned perfectly with the song's lyrics.
The pairing of "Goodbye" with Dark is one of the most effective uses of a theme song in television history. The song doesn't just set the mood — it encodes the show's entire philosophy. Time loops, paradoxes, the impossibility of endings — all of it is contained in three words: "neither ever, nor never." For millions of viewers, hearing this song now immediately triggers the unsettling, beautiful atmosphere of Dark, proving that the right song can become inseparable from the story it accompanies.
| Word / Phrase | Meaning | Example Sentence |
|---|---|---|
| neither... nor | A grammatical structure meaning "not one and not the other" — used to reject both options | "The answer was neither simple nor obvious." |
| goodbye | A farewell; an acknowledgment that someone is leaving — from the old English phrase "God be with ye" | "She whispered goodbye, knowing she might never see him again." |
| ever / never | Always / at no time — opposites that represent the extremes of time | "He wondered if they would ever meet again, or if this was truly never." |
Apparat is the solo project of Sascha Ring, a German electronic musician and composer based in Berlin. Known for atmospheric, emotionally textured electronic music that draws from ambient, post-rock, and classical influences, Ring has been a key figure in Berlin's electronic scene since the early 2000s. His collaboration with Soap&Skin on "Goodbye" became his most widely recognised work after its use in Netflix's Dark.
"Goodbye" teaches you one of English's most elegant grammatical structures — "neither... nor" — in a context that makes its meaning unforgettable. But beyond grammar, the song demonstrates how a single word — "goodbye" — can carry infinite emotional weight depending on how it's spoken, repeated, and contextualised. For English learners, this song is proof that simplicity in English isn't the same as shallowness. The simplest word in the language can be the hardest to say.