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Nina Hagen (born Catharina Hagen on March 11, 1955) is a singer from Berlin, Germany.
Nina's parents were Hans Hagen (also known as Hans Oliva), a scriptwriter, and Eva-Maria Hagen, an actress and singer. Her paternal Jewish grandparents lost their lives in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Her parents divorced when Nina was two years old, and she saw her father infrequently growing up. At age four, she began to study ballet, and was considered an opera prodigy by the time she was nine.
When Nina was eleven, her mother married Wolf Biermann, a revolutionary anti-establishment singer/songwriter. Biermann's political views incalculably influenced young Nina: she was "dishonorably discharged" from the Free German Youth group at age twelve, and active in political protests against the socialist East German government.
Nina left school after completing the 10th grade (at age 16), and joined the cover band "Fritzens Dampferband" (together with Achim Mentzel and others). In part, she dropped out because she felt constrained by what the oppressive regime considered to be "acceptable" music, and added songs by Janis Joplin and Tina Turner to the "allowable" setlists during shows.
From 1972-3, Nina enrolled in the crash-course performance program at The Central Studio for Light Music in East Berlin, and upon graduation, formed the band Automobil.
In East Germany, she performed with the band Automobil, becoming one of the country's best-known young stars. Her most famous song from the early part of her career was "Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen" (You Forgot the Color Film) in 1974. However, her musical career in East Germany was cut short when she and her mother left the country in 1976, following the expulsion of her stepfather Wolf Biermann.
The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were exceptional: Biermann was granted permission to perform a televised concert in West Berlin, but denied permission to re-cross the border to his home country. During a period when bureaucracy was the norm, and families divided by the Berlin Wall had not seen one another in decades, Nina submitted an application to leave the country. In it, she claimed to be Biermann's biological daughter, and threatened to become the next Wolf Biermann if not allowed to rejoin her father. Just four days later, her request was miraculously granted, and she settled in Hamburg, where she was signed almost immediately to a CBS-affiliated record label. Her label advised her to acclimate herself to Western culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height of the punk rock musical movement. Nina was quickly taken up by a circle that included The Slits and the Sex Pistols, and Johnny Rotten was a particular admirer.
Back in Germany by the summer of 1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen Band in West Berlin's Kreuzberg district. In 1978 they released their self-titled debut album, which included the single TV-Glotzer (a cover of White Punks on Dope by The Tubes, lyrically altered to German language and expressing the thoughts of a depressed couch potato whose life revolves around TV), and Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo, about West Berlin's then-notorious Berlin Zoologischer Garten station. The album also included a version of "Rangehn" (approximately, Go On), a song she had previously recorded in East Germany, but with different music.
According to reviewer Fritz Rumler,
… she thrusts herself into the music, aggressively, directly, furiously, roars in the most beautiful opera alto, then, through shrieks and squeals, precipitates into luminous soprano heights, she parodies, satirises, and howls on stage like a dervish.
The album gained significant attention throughout Germany and abroad, both for its hard rock sound and for Hagen's theatrical vocals, far different from the straightforward singing of her East German recordings. However, relations between Hagen and the other band members deteriorated over the course of the subsequent European tour, and Hagen decided to leave the band in 1979, though she was still under contract to produce a second album. This LP, Unbehagen (which in German also means discomfort or unease), was eventually produced with the band recording their tracks in Berlin and Hagen recording the vocals in Los Angeles, California. It included the single African Reggae and a cover of Lene Lovich's Lucky Number. The other band members sans Hagen, soon developed a successful independent musical career as Spliff.
Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media uproar and she became infamous for an appearance on an Austrian talk show called Club 2, in which she simulated masturbation. She also acted with Dutch rocker Herman Brood and singer Lene Lovich in the movie Cha Cha.
A European tour with a new band in 1980 was cancelled, and Nina turned to the New World. A limited-edition U.S. album was released on vinyl that summer: one side contained two English-language songs, and the B side was two tracks from Unbehagen.
In the fall of 1980, Hagen discovered she was pregnant, broke up with the father-to-be, and moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter, Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born in Santa Monica on May 17, 1981. In 1982, Hagen released her first solo album NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk, funk, reggae, and opera, and went on a world tour with the No Problem Orchestra.
In 1983 came the album Angstlos and a minor European tour. By this time, Hagen's public appearances were becoming stranger and frequently included discussions of God, UFOs, her social and political beliefs, animal rights and vivisection and claims of alien sightings. The English version of Angstlos, Fearless, generated two major club hits in America , Zarah (a cover of the Zarah Leander song Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen) and the disco/punk/opera classic, New York New York.
1985's Nina Hagen In Ekstasy fared less well, but did generate club hits with "Universal Radio" and a cover of "Spirit In The Sky" and also featured a 1979 recording of her hardcore punk take on Frank Sinatra's My Way, which had been one of her signature live tunes in previous years. Her contract with CBS over, she released the Punk Wedding EP independently in 1987, a celebration of her marriage to an 18-year old punk nicknamed 'Iroquois'. It followed an independent 1986 one-off single with Lene Lovich, the anthemic Don't Kill The Animals. In 1989 Hagen released the album Nina Hagen which was backed up by another German tour.
In the 1990s, Hagen lived in Paris with her daughter Cosma Shiva. In 1991 she toured Europe in support of her new album Street. Hagen also has a son, Otis. In 1992 Hagen became the host of a TV show on RTLplus. The following year she released Revolution Ballroom and two years later the German-language album Freud Euch appeared, recorded in English as Beehappy in 1996. Also in 1996, Hagen collaborated with electronic music composer Christopher Franke, along with Rick Jude on "Alchemy of Love", the theme song for the Tenchi Universe movie Tenchi Muyo! in Love.
In 1998, Hagen became the host of a weekly science fiction show on the British Sci-Fi-Channel, in addition to embarking on another tour of Germany. In 1999, she released the devotional album Om Namah Shivay, which was distributed exclusively online. She also sang "Witness" on KMFDM's Adios.
In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in Die Dreigroschenoper by Kurt Weil and Berthold Brecht, alongside Max Raabe.
In 2000, her song Schön ist die Welt became the official song of Expo 2000. Another cover of a Zarah Leander song "Der Wind hat mir ein Lied erzählt" was a minor hit the same year. The album The Return of the Mother was released in February 2001, accompanied by another German tour. In 2001 she collaborated with Rosenstolz and Marc Almond on the single Total eclipse/Die schwarze Witwe that reached #22 in Germany.
Hagen dubbed the voice of Sally in the German release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and she has also done voice work in Hot Dogs by Michael Schoemann. Hagen has been featured on songs by other bands, for instance on Oomph!'s song Fieber. Most recently, she did a cover of Rammstein's "Seemann" with Apocalyptica. She sang the song Garota de Berlim with Brazilian singer Supla in the 1970s.
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