Recommendations of the editorial team
None (r) is like her. That would be far too exhausting to everyone. Equipped with the mission to work on world peace, Nina Hagen has been having the media landscape for many years. What sometimes goes down is her musical position from the end of the 1970s to the mid-1980s: During this time, Nina Hagen lives the punk and feeds the pop like no other artist did it.
The three best albums by Nina Hagen
Nina Hagen Band – Nina Hagen Band (1978)
The debut with the people who later make a career as a split: excellent rock tracks that actually have hardly any punk elements, but rather remind you of the New Wave, Pub and Glam rock, which appears on the Stiff label in Great Britain. The band plays fantastic, Nina Hagen sings as if the job as a rock singer is her only calling.
★★★★★
Nina Hagen – Nunsexmonkrock (1982)
The first album without a band appendix is an exercise in avant-garde. With the help of US musicians, Nina Hagen succeeds in a record with mutant disco beats, spacy instrumental passages and crazy vocal improvisations. Some tracks such as “Smack Jack” still come from their annoyed Amsterdam phase, others such as “UFO” or “Cosma Shiva” refer to the paranormal and spiritual building blocks, which from now on determine many of their texts.
★★★★★
Nina Hagen – fearless / Fearless (1983)
Calculated but impressively staged Nina Hagen as a German disco diva, a kind of FRG variant by Grace Jones, with a significantly stronger voice and completely different look. The disco track “New York / NY” works formidally. Pieces such as “Lorelei” or her version of the song made by Zarah Leander “I know that a miracle will happen” stand for your German heritage.
★★★★★
More hit albums by Nina Hagen
Nina Hagen Band – discomfort (1979)
Suitable album title, because there is discomfort above this plate: the music was largely created without the singer, with whose supposedly excessive ego development the boys had their problems. Accordingly, there are a few more technical gadgets on the album.
★★★★
Revolution Ballroom (1993)
Return to exaltation, the project succeeds in half with contemporary alternative rock at the time.
★★★★
OM Namah Shivay (1999)
Nina Hagen sets a Hare-Krishna event-more calming than you could think.
★★★★
Big Band Explosion (2003)
The singer dominates a big band that is rarely experienced.
★★★★
Somewhere in the world (2006)
Nina Hagen briefly finds a new home with revue songs and impetids.
★★★★
Volksbeat (2011)
Smart, not overwhelmed, almost resting – strong album.
★★★★
These plates are only mediocrity
Nina Hagen – Nina Hagen in Ecstasy / Nina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985)
The progressive synth and digital technology of the 80s are not good for the sound of the album. The plans of the record company CBS, Nina Hagen to make HIT artists, not either. “Universal radio” runs in clubs, but freshness and cheek are missing. As a cover version, she chooses Sinatra’s “My Way” and the religiously colored hippie hit “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum, which she Germanized with “God in heaven”.
★★★
Freud you (1995)
UFOs, animals, freedom-plus a gloria and a track about the elephant god: Nina-Hagen-Trash, not without a joke.
★★★
Personal Jesus (2010)
The attempt to bring Nina Hagen to Johnny-Cash fairway-a semi-silk undertaking.
★★★
Unity (2022)
The album confirms the good late form after eleven years break: a perfect home for Nina Hagen – and it draws from the full. Feminism and consumer criticism, Bible stories and a cover of “The answer knows the wind alone” – a plate like a revue. Nina Hagen sings brilliantly, the music is good when it takes your distance from the electro rock that gets some moments because it sounds like what you imagine at RTL under rock music.
★★★
Nina Hagen (1989)
Failed attempt at a more or less conventional hard rock plate.
★★
Return of the Mother (2000)
The idea was to position Nina Hagen in the Joachim-Witt/Rammstein camp. Doesn’t work.
★★
The album overview was first published in the ME 12/22.