Nina Hagen - Definitive Collection

Genere: Punk Rock, Post Punk,

Similar artists: Lene Lovich, Lidia Lunch, Siouxie and the Banshees

Recording year : Columbia, 1995.

Nina Hagen (born Catharina Hagen on 11 March 1955) is a singer from East Berlin, Germany. Hagen's parents are Hans Hagen (also known as Hans Oliva), a scriptwriter, and Eva-Maria Hagen, an actress and singer. Her paternal Jewish grandparents died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and growing up she saw her father infrequently. At age four, she began to study ballet, and was considered an opera prodigy by the time she was nine.When Hagen was 11, her mother married Wolf Biermann, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter. Biermann's political views influenced young Hagen: she was "dishonorably discharged" from the Free German Youth group at age 12, and became active in political protests against the East German government. Hagen left school at age 16, and joined the cover band Fritzens Dampferband (Fritzen's Steamboat Band, together with Achim Mentzel and others). She added songs by Janis Joplin and Tina Turner to the "allowable" set lists during shows.

She had already gained a reputation as a flamboyant rock singer by the time she emigrated to the West in 1976, where she formed a band, signed to CBS Germany, and released their debut album, Nina Hagen Band, in 1978. It was followed in 1980 by Unbehagen. Hagen's first U.S. release, Nina Hagen Band EP (1980), was a four-song EP consisting of songs drawn from her two German releases. She moved to New York and made her first English-language LP, Nunsexmonkrock, in 1982. That and its follow-up, the Giorgio Moroder-produced Fearless (1983), charted briefly, and "New York New York" was a Top Ten dance club hit. But Hagen left CBS after Nina Hagen in Ekstacy (1985). In 1988, she celebrated her marriage with the EP Punk Wedding, released in Canada, and in 1989 she returned to the German market with Nina Hagen.

Fields Of Haze.