When Luci van Org released the song “Girl” together with producer Ralf Goldkind as Lucilectric in 1994, she probably wasn’t aware that it wasn’t just her best-known song, but also her the anthem for a new media phenomenon. In the 1990s, numerous young women soon gathered under the banner of the “Girlie”, who usually dressed “girlishly” in garish colours, floral dresses, animal patterns or even bare midriffs, and just as little stopped at facial piercings as they did at the notorious “ ass antlers made.
But what made the girlie stand out above all was not her brightly colored styling, but above all her uncompromising appearance. Contrary to traditional gender conventions, the rebellious young woman of the nineties was self-confident to cheeky on the outside and flirted with her provocative charm, instead of burning bras and growing her armpit hair long like her feminist pioneers – a kind of light version of the riot Grrrls, so to speak.
Just a one hit wonder?
While Viva and Co. made presenters like Heike Makatsch and Charlotte Roche the most prominent representatives of the girlie movement, the trend could also be observed within the music world, embodied in the rave scene, for example, by DJ icon Marusha and happy hardcore – Asterisk, little flower. And then there was Lucilectric: with their trendy catchy “Girl”, van Org and Goldkind spent a whole twelve weeks in the German top 10 and made it to number 2 in the single charts. The successor “Hey Süßer” even landed in pole position in the Austrian charts, but unfortunately didn’t make any big waves.
Even the mediocre success of the debut album MÄDCHEN, released in 1994, which spent at least a few weeks in the German top 20, as well as the even worse-performing successors SÜSS UND GEMEIN (1996) and TIEFER (1997), unfortunately the duo could not surpass the reputation of a one – Help hit wonders away. However, the separation of the band in 1999 should by no means mean the end of their two ex-members’ musical careers.
What became of Ralf Goldkind?
Multi-instrumentalist Ralf Goldkind aka Ralf Droge, who was already four years old strummed the piano in his parents’ jazz club in Hamburg, began his musical career in 1989 with Hugo Race & The True Spirit. In the years that followed, Goldkind made a name for himself as a studio musician and producer. Among other things, he was for Nina Hagens FREUD EUCH (1995) is jointly responsible and was the keyboardist for the chart hit “MfG” by the Fantastischen Vier (1999) in the studio. In 2000, together with Jan Plewka von Selig, he produced the soundtrack to the German teen comedy Schule, starring Daniel Brühl and Axel Stein.
Finally, in September 2012, Ralf Goldkind’s first post-punk solo album called ALEIN IM RING was released via MOM sonic. In addition to the musician himself, it also features Alphaville’s Marian Gold, who contributed backing vocals to the song “Never Again.”
Even today, Goldkind spends his time doing what he enjoys most: music. In line with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Berlin producer shared his new wave punk song “Distance Keeping!” in 2020, for which he says he was inspired by a songwriting session with Dee Dee Ramone.
What became of Luci van Org?
Luci van Org, born Ina Lucia Hildebrand in Berlin in 1971, also began her musical career in her early teens. The first own band was founded at the age of 13, at 15 she was discovered by Falco’s former background singer Anke Wendland at an open mic performance, who took the young girl to the studio as a background singer for her own solo record. Van Org got her first recording contract a little later with the label Hansa Musik Produktion, for which she not only sang her first single, but also temporarily adopted the artist name Eena.
Because the former punk singer found it difficult to come to terms with the disco-pop identity that was imposed on her, she left the label in the early 1990s and teamed up with Ralf Goldkind, whom rumor has it she met by chance on the S-Bahn. After separating from Lucilectric in 1999, van Org recorded her solo single “Waterfalls” and a duet with Selig’s Jan Plewka, while also writing songs for German acts such as Nena, Nina Hagen, Eisblume, Terrorgruppe and Panda.
Van Org also continued to make music herself with her band Das Haus von Luci, with whom she released two albums: DER VERBOTENE RAUM (2003) and DER TOD LIVING NEXT (2006). The latter appeared as a supplement to the volume of short stories of the same name, which was published four years after van Org’s debut as an author in the anthology Taxi Stories.
In the same year she wrote the play “The 7 Deadly Sins or the Wedding of the Weather Fairy” with the actor Andreas Schmidt, which premiered on November 26, 2006 at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. The all-rounder made her TV debut as a screenwriter in 2007 with the first episode of “Notruf Hafen Kante”. In the same year, van Org also dedicated her new German hardship project Üebermutter, with which she released her debut album UNHEIL! published.
Van Org made another genre change in 2010 when she founded the indie electropop duo Meystersinger together with actor and musician Roman Shamov (Rummelsnuff, Weird Fishes). The first album TROST was released in 2012 with financial crowdfunding support from their fans. Two more studio albums followed.
Van Org is currently working on the pop project KiNG MAMI, for which she has teamed up as producer and songwriter with actor, voice actor and singer Daniel Zillmann. The duo’s latest song is titled “Jabba the HOT” and was released in late August along with the accompanying music video. An album is said to be in the works, and on the 2018/2019 Fotogena tour, Zillmann was able to demonstrate his stage skills as support for Laing.
Between and during her musical projects, van Org repeatedly worked as an actress, moderator, screenwriter and even as a fetish model for a short time. She wrote columns for the “Berliner Morgenpost” and numerous novels such as “Frau Hölle” (2013), “Schneewittchen und die Kunst of Killing” (2015) and “Vagina dentata” (2019).
The 2011 feature film “Lollipop Monster”, for which van Org wrote the screenplay together with Ziska Riemann, won awards at the Berlinale in the categories “Best Young Actress” and “Best Picture Design” and also received the “German Film Critics’ Award” in the Best Music category.
The second film by the two filmmakers was released in 2019. In “Electric Girl”, protagonist Mia is given the chance to voice over an anime superheroine, but in the process she loses herself more and more in the fictional world of her character and gradually takes control of her own life.
In 2016, she proved that despite her numerous film and music projects, van Org has not forgotten the origins of her success: she sang for the debut album of the metal band Sataninchen a cover of their greatest Lucilectric hit and transported “girls” into the 21st century. In 2022 she succeeded in an even more contemporary way: On Jennifer Weist’s (Jennifer Rostock) solo debut NACKT under the stage name Yaenniver, Luci van Org can be heard as a guest singer in the song “Girl Girl”, which quotes the original from 1994.
You want to know more about Luci van Org and Lucilectric? Van Org is a guest on episode 11 of “NEVER FORGET – the 90s Podcast” and talks to Stephan Rehm Rozanes and Fabian Soethof about one-hit-wonder, meeting Linda Perry and feminism. Since October 12, 2020 everywhere there are podcasts.
+++ This text was originally published in May 2020 and has been continuously updated since then. +++