Nina Hagen
Revolution Ballroom

The importance of being Nina Hagen: curiosity, extravagance, and other wonderful anomalies, chapter II.

The glorious Neue Deutsche Welle was, just like the summer of love, grunge, NWOBHM, and many other musical movements, a phenomenon limited in time which, given its characteristics, offered countless possible evolutions, reinterpretations, and creative developments. Catharina Hagen, one of the, or rather, the iconic face par excellence of the NDW, could not miss the opportunity to explore new styles, especially for someone like her, a free spirit, a showwoman, a voice capable of interpreting practically anything and making it special. With "Street" (1991), she dives headlong into rap/funky sounds, an interesting experiment but unfortunately not fully up to her potential. A couple of years later, it's the turn of "Revolution Ballroom," a big jumble of disjointed sounds, shamelessly song-like, ostentatious right from the cover, hilarious, sexy, and irresistible. Yes, Nina can.

Nina can make something credible that in anyone else's hands would result in nothing but a senseless show-off, her adaptability, her voice that somehow always finds a way to leave you speechless, her overwhelming stage presence, a personality more unique than rare. "Revolution Ballroom" is a knockout of an album because here Nina doesn't care about anything or anyone, she sings what she feels like singing, ignoring any stylistic or ideological cliché, she couldn't care less about critics and experts who will never consider it as worthy as "Unbehagen" or "NunSexMonkRock", but she is Nina Hagen, and they ain't got a clue. She is not a mummy to be displayed in a showcase, she is not the fetish of a specific historical moment, she is an Artist who has never set limits, a Popstar who does not compromise, of any kind, and so everyone hits the dance floor with Nina, who will delight us with her adorable unpredictability. Just to break the ice, to maintain a vague connection to the past, it starts with the scenic and abrasive electro-rock of "So Bad"; it's immediately noticeable that the singing is no longer over the top like in her more roaring years, but with a voice like that, you don't need to repeat the same circus tricks that inevitably lose their edge over the years. And so Nina makes use of the power of her vocal cords and her unchanged interpretative charisma in other ways, plush and casual in the mischievous honky-tonk of "Right On Time", in which she improvises as the queen of outlaw country accompanied by slide guitar and accordion, an explosive and sensual androgynous blues-soul diva scratching and blowing on the phrases of "I'm Gonna Live The Life", smoky and coy, then screamer and thus amateur rapper in "Berlin", which refines and improves the discourse undertaken with the previous album, accompanying it all with a fine sax and funky bass.

"Revolution Ballroom" is first and foremost color and fun, which abound particularly in the delightful gypsy-ska march of "Pollution Pirates" and the disco-gay triumph of "Pillow Talk", but there is also a new element that characterizes the album in a significant way; the fascination with Hinduism, spirituality, and the music of the Indian subcontinent. The first traces of this unusual passion date back a bit earlier, specifically to "Cosma Shiva" in 1982, but here Nina begins to get serious, opening up a new path that insinuates itself into the lively pop-rock of the title track and the harmonies of a sensual "King Of Hearts", a song that overturns the typical man-to-woman attraction cliché, common in contrast to its opposite, given that in a typically male-dominated culture, the man is seen as "the dominator" rather than as an object of physical and spiritual desire so clearly, without beating around the bush, obviously not for Diva Nina. "L'Amore" is surprisingly sung in Italian, and even though the text leaves much to be desired, "amore di mente, amore di parole, viviamocene uno solamente, l'amore che è nel cuore, amore capriccioso, amore clandestino, viviamocene uno solamente, l'amore del divino", Nina still manages to make a striking impression, as always, and the rest is taken care of by a creamy blues guitar, the second part of the song, sung in Sanskrit, is fascinating, dreamlike, a brief journey into sounds and atmospheres so far removed from those of her Berlin; and it is precisely this new Hagenian horizon that seals "Revolution Ballroom" with the compelling chorus of "Omhaidakhandi", a rendition of a Hindu religious song.

Of this "new" Nina, however, there will be a way to talk in much more depth in chapter III, those who have a good knowledge of her discography will already have an idea of where I'm going with this. Returning to "Revolution Ballroom," what can I say? "eppur si muove" seems to me the best metaphor to describe it; uncoordinated, incoherent, clumsy, yet it works perfectly, apparently, with Nina, the general rules for any other artist do not apply. From a purely pop standpoint, it is perhaps the best album of her career and perhaps her last fully successful album of new tracks, let's say it is to Nina more or less what "7-Tease" is to Donovan: a light, colorful album, certainly not innovative but impeccable and highly effective; oh, I give it a five-star rating, I know perfectly well that this album is not "Unbehagen" and does not deserve all of them, but for that imponderable X factor, the endearment, the admiration, the affection, I can easily follow my heart and ignore the reason that would advise me to remove a star, and after all, as I see it, evaluating Nina Hagen with the parameters of logic and reason means completely misunderstanding her.