Nena
? Fragezeichen

THE REVIEW

The Nena Band, an ensemble active from 1981 to 1987 including Uwe Fahrenkrog on keyboards, Carlo Karges on guitar, Jurgen Dehmel on bass, and Rolf Brendel on drums in addition to the adorable frontwoman Gabriele "Nena" Kerner, is an intelligent, classy, and unconventional choice for those who believe that so-called pop music should be, first and foremost, immediate, empathetic, and free from pretentiousness and unnecessary frills, without forgetting good taste and personality. The German response, or more generally the intelligent and "classy" response to the Americans Blondie, has a history closely intertwined with the NDW scene, a flourishing and rich crucible of ideas, and the immediate exploitation of "99 Luftballons," contained in the debut album dated 1983, represented one of the major driving forces for this heterogeneous movement, facilitating its emergence from the underground and beyond German borders. Nena's recipe is as simple as it is effective: lively and heterogeneous pop rock revisited with a new wave twist, a good dose of guitars, highly impactful choruses, and sometimes a characteristic dreamy and visionary imprint in sound and songwriting, of which the universally known hit is a perfect example. Add to it a pleasant and expressive vocality and the simple, jaunty yet elegant beauty of the frontwoman, and you have all the ingredients for an interesting and undoubtedly noteworthy proposal, underestimated and unjustly remembered as a one-hit wonder outside German borders.

The excellent debut album, beyond aerial balloons, is an album that is especially memorable for the vibrant pop-wave of tracks like "Indianer," "Nur Getraumt," and "Leuchtturm" while its worthy successor, curiously titled "?", is a product marked by evolution in continuity, a little more reflective, a little less immediate, a little more mature, slower and more dilated in rhythms compared to the highly successful debut, to which it has absolutely nothing to envy except a new hit with international impact, but for the overall assessment, it is only a very minor detail. Nena and company continue to cleverly and tastefully blend structures and sounds from the '70s and '80s, new wave and pop rock, electronics and guitars, with good taste and marked melodic sensitivity, trying to experiment with new solutions like in the case of "Das Land Der Elefanten", a curious, very pleasant and captivating fusion between new wave and ethnic percussion which stands, with its imaginative vision and originality of the proposal, but not for public reception potential, as the "99 Luftballons" of the album. The more carefree and easy-listening side of Nena's eclectic personality comes alive in some instances like "Kuess Mich Wach", which dissolves a certain cold tension accumulated in the verses into a sunny refrain with a very '60s female pop flavor, the danceable and subtly sexy new wave of "Sois Bienvenu" and especially in the opener "Rette Mich", bright, vibrant, and enthusiastic, marked by a pop-punkish guitar and colored by the dreamy sound of a sampled flute and in an exquisitely crafted title track, "?" or "Fragezeichen", if you prefer, a semi-ballad with a rich and rounded sound, incisive guitars in the right places, an effective and enveloping electronic arrangement, and a sparkling final sax solo for a pop song of classic yet personal and charismatic beauty. "?" is a more balanced album than its predecessor, allowing more space for reflective sounds, a bit shadier and certainly more feminine and decidedly less radio-friendly; the fairy-tale suggestions of "Unerkannt Durchs Maerchenland", new wave, ethnic percussion, and an enigmatic and indecipherable charm and the slightly hypnotic and nocturnal elegance of a slow and measured march, a more refined evolution of "Satellitenstadt" from the previous album, but also the naive and dreamy sweetness of "Lass Mich Dein Pirat Sein" and a fine love song like "Ich Haeng' An Dir", with a nice blueasy/retro touch in the guitars and arrangement, finally closing with a beautiful piano-ballad, an absolute novelty for Nena & Co, "Der Anfang Vom Ende", theatrical, intense and very moving, classic sound, warm and straight to the heart, perfect for ensuring a perfect finale to this beautiful album.

Not just "99 Lufballons" but much more for the beautiful Nena Kerner, a charming and also original artist to whom one cannot fail to recognize invaluable qualities like sincerity and enthusiasm, and an "alternative" nature deriving from a distinct and well-cultivated personality, genuine pop with class and competence, an empathy and feeling that waiting to find in the likes of Ellie Goulding, Lykke Li, and Kate Nash is like expecting to invent perpetual motion; it's a pity that after a maturity test widely surpassed, the subsequent albums "Feuer Und Flamme" and "Eisbrecher" will prove convincing only in parts, ultimately leading to the disbandment of the band and the start of a solo career not devoid of good works but overall inconsistent for Nena Kerner, whose first two albums with the band, "?" with more richness and maturity compared to "Nena", represent a legacy of remarkable value, from which aspiring new stars of a pop as pretentious as impersonal and sterile should study thoroughly and, if possible, take an example, recognizing this small-great artist the importance and praise she deserves.