Everything that Nina Hagen has released in the form of music since the mid-1980s has inevitably become part of a media spectacle, and you only find interesting music now and then. Which is a pity, because this artist has the potential for one or the other great late work. Does UNITY deliver on the promise? The conditions are good, because the first new record in eleven years will be released by Herbert Grönemeyer’s Greenland label, which is lovingly dedicated to the management of German pop heritage.
A perfect home for Nina Hagen – and she draws on the full. Feminism and criticism of consumerism, Bible stories and a cover of “The wind alone knows the answer” – a record like a revue. Nina Hagen sings brilliantly, the music is good when she distances herself from electro rock, which spoils some moments because it sounds like what RTL imagines as rock music.
The piece “Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty” is adventurous, a mash-up of world pop, country and political speeches, one comes from Hagen herself: Here the outraged activist is speaking – the core sentence: “Why do I have a government?” Because UNITY is an album should be, which depicts all phases of the artist, the best piece sounds like an update from the good old days of the Nina Hagen Band: “Gib mir dein Liebe” is a swan song to “Relationship boxes”, where she sings the chorus breathtakingly well, like a teenager who finally wants love.
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