Nina Hagen Band
Unbehagen

What exactly is a Diva? What must a woman have to be considered one? The answers to these questions are absolutely subjective and varied; the most immediate image evoked by this term takes us back in time to the black-and-white films of various Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, and Rita Hayworth, statuesque figures of absolute beauty and charisma; as time has gone on, this standard has undergone a trashy evolution that in the strictly musical field has given rise to tragic epigones like Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga, and so on, but not only: the salvation of the most authentic divaism lies in the "deviant" evolution, in the reversal of the most canonical aesthetic styles of the traditional diva. Some joker might discern the plump silhouette of Beth Ditto from this statement, but obviously, it is not her I'm referring to but rather Nina Hagen, the wonderful and unique Erste Frau of the Neue Deutsche Welle.

 What a diva never lacks is a very strong, magnetic personality, capable of breaking through the screen, a bit of eccentricity, and a crystal-clear and undeniable talent, you don't become a diva, it’s something inherent in a person, in their DNA, and Nina Hagen was born with this gift. Born in East Berlin to artist parents, her talent manifested at a very young age, exploding definitively with an apparently harmless little song, “Du Hast Den Farbfilm Vergessen”, in which she quite directly stigmatized the apathy and artistic and social grayness that plagued Erich Honecker's regime. The DDR was not yet ready for an artist of that type and caliber, so Nina emigrated to the RFT, where she finally found her eldorado: a punk scene in full ferment, where Nina made her entrance with all her artistic fury, immediately gaining fame, recognition, and the status of a transgressive, unpredictable, charismatic, and extravagant performer, an original and unrepeatable talent, light-years away from the squalid monotony and pre-packaged pseudo nonconformity of the so-called "riot girls", or even more crudely, "grrls".

 The '80s arrived and punk, thanks in part to her contribution, sublimated into the Neue Deutsche Welle, Nina was one of the main architects of legitimizing this trend as a mass phenomenon thanks mainly to a pioneering album like “Unbehagen” from 1979, translatable as discomfort or irritation, a title more than exemplary. Nina's irritation is aimed at conformism, clichés, stupidity, and superficiality. It's a short, nervous, incisive, vibrant album, dominated by a phenomenon that loves to play with her voice, destroy it, caricature it, experiment and mix the most disparate vocal styles, a schizoid female counterpart to the most outlandish Tom Waits. A relatively homogeneous and compact album like a monolith, “Unbehagen” is excellently represented by its iconic track, “African Reggae”, hypnotic rhythms, a cadenced and vaguely cataleptic bass, the vocal arabesques of an ever more shamanic Hagen who mixes reggae with yodel, metaphorically mocking the ignorant living room exoticism and the commodification of cultures. Nina doesn’t hold back, striding fast and relentless from one blast to another, supported by an extraordinary backing band. Dense and scratchy guitars, superlative basses, ingenious electronic ideas, moments of pure theater, the journey finds its peaks in the epic flow of “Alptraum”, genetically modified blues rock elevated to a new dimension, the neurotic and exhilarating carousel of “Wir Leben Immer... Noch” and the unpredictable and theatrical mutability of “Hermann Hiess Er”, reaching the limit with the squeaks and shrieks of the animalistic “Wau Wau”, dominated by a hammering and cyclical guitar riff.

 “Auf’m Rummel” instead travels on slightly more canonical tones, relatively closer to a classic glam rock, while the rhythmic pace of “Unbehagen” is broken by the beat excursion of a charming “Wenn Ich Ein Junge Wer” and the final “Fall In Love Mit Mir”, lively and carefree, which would be perfect as the theme for Happy Days, moments of pure fun and entertainment as only a true Diva knows how to offer. A highly influential and historically significant record, “Unbehagen” definitively launches Nina Hagen's star into orbit, one of the most beautiful female voices in history, the courage to go beyond, the allure of a non-conformist beauty, free, wild, absolute, electric and electronic blasts, vocal outbursts as an antidote to grayness and monotony, music that experiments with a sanguine, genuine style, without ever indulging in sterile exercises of style, one of the most extreme evolutions of pop, all this and much more is Nina Hagen.