New York City ist die heisseste Stadt wenn man einen neuen Boyfriend und ein Hotelzimmer hat!

This is again radio eurovan with our news

Oh, I'm sorry turn on the machine

This is is radio eurovan,

my name is Franz Ivanovich

Hagen and this is the news

I was born in XIXAX (oh la la la dee)

On my mama's farm

My father was a junkie

Und wir waren sehr arm

Isn't it "Hans Ivanovich Hagen"?

New York, New York

sad note: all the clubs mentioned in the song are now defunct. RIP, Pyramid.

“New York, New York” might be her crowd-pleasing hit, but the NUNSEXMONKROCK album is her masterpiece. People are still trying to figure that one out! I’m amazed an album so weird was released on a major label. Her range of vocal tricks is fascinating. I also can’t believe this LP has never been remastered or deluxe-released.

R4 Agree. It does have a cult following.

Nunsexmonkrock is incredible from beginning to end, and I will vote for Antiworld because it is such a strong album opener, but I also love Tatchi-Tarot, Future is Now (1981 is over! Future is Nooooooooooooooooow!) Born in Xixax, Dread Love, etc...

From other albums, Gods of Aquarius is great, as is her cover of Spirit in the Sky, Tiere is a great song, as are several of the incarnations of Shiva. Her appearance on Get Your Body by Adamski is fantastic as well.

Oh, and Zarah. Don't forget Zarah.

Nunsexmonkrock is fantastic, and one of those albums you can listen to over and over and over and keep hearing new things, because she's layered so many vocals over one another. Just the ADHD nature of it is fascinating too, mixing in Brecht/Weill with Soviet children's songs, etc. I love the album from start to finish. It's hard to pick favourite tracks, but they would include "Antiworld" (based on a poem by Andrei Voznesensky), "Tatschi-Tarot", "Dread Love" ("Die Partei hat immer recht und alle sind Sie geile Tiere!"), "Future is Now", "Born in Xixax" and "Iki Maska".

From other albums? "Naturträne", "TV-Glotzer", "Fisch im Wasser" is a fun throwaway, "African Reggae", "Wenn ich ein Junge wär" (where she changes the lyrics from the original Rita Pavone version to wish she was a gay man - "Ich würde in die Schwulen-Szene gehen/Und sexy Boys den Kopf verdrehen/Ich hätt' genug Verkehr/Wenn ich ein Junge wär'"), "New York, New York", "My Sensation", "I Love Paul", "Zarah", "Universal Radio", "Atomic Flash Deluxe", "Russian Reggae", "Südafrika" (never recorded as far as I know)... there's so many. I haven't even listened to her albums from Nina Hagen (1989) onwards yet.

Her early albums as Nina Hagen Band are also good, the self-titled one and Unbehagen. They mostly have a rougher, punk sound, but every song is fronted by THAT VOICE.

Look, just because I am currently sharing the same plane of reality in your present existence, doesn't mean I must have a favorite Nina Hagen song.

Her cover of Lene Lovich’s “Lucky Number” is totally banging. As good as the original in a whole different way (and they’re friends so I doubt Lene minds).

I enjoy their duet, R10

Don't kill the animals

Don't kill the animals

The animals are free

Free-hee-hee-hee!

******

love Nina. my fav is also “Born in Xixax".

I love listening to shredded vocals that cause anxiety and a sense of dread and suicidal tendencies.

NH is an AIDS-denialist cunt. Fuck her.

I'm not the hugest fan of "Don't Kill the Animals", but I do enjoy her friendship with Lovich, and their scenes in Cha-Cha, walking around together, singing "Пусть всегда будет солнце" or them riffing together at the bar...

Nina Hagen ran into controversy (again) years ago while on tour in the west coast of America, I think in the ‘00s, (‘10s?) on stage she began spouting rhetoric from an author that claimed HIV was not the cause of AIDS. She was also quoted in an interview later saying — simply — she supported those who were “de-transitioning.”

This didn’t go over well with audience members, particularly in San Francisco. I don’t need to tell you the stories and quotes were exaggerated and taken out of context for maximum woke nightmare outrage. A lifelong lightning rod for controversy, Nina (once again) couldn’t have cared less and simply returned to Europe when the tour was over. Which didn’t help matters for those that were angry. The stories and rumors have lingered ever since online and in queer subsets.

Google it.

Personally, and like a lot of people with half a brain who can get one eye open and remember longer than last week, I believe that if you truly think Nina Hagen — yes crazy ass NINA HAGEN — is homophobic, anti-AIDS research and transphobic (a reminder, we’re talking about NINA HAGEN) then you’re hopelessly lost.

During her career spanning back to the 70’s, Nina has also claimed — un-ironically and without humor — that Sid and Nancy were murdered by the K.G.B. and they’ve been trying to kill her ever since, that she is regularly visited by UFO’s, still, that she is the actual reincarnation of several gods and goddesses, that humans can live on nothing but air, and that her daughter Cosma is the literal daughter of God.

So...

Remember in the 80’s when Nina Hagen pissed off all those uptight, judge-y, morally perfect Christians, who constantly tried to ban her?

Seems familiar.

Exactly, R17. I think she took a bad LSD trip sometime in the 70s and it's kinda made her brain go a bit crazy, or maybe she always was a bit off like that (artistic genius can often coincide with this, it seems). She grew up in interesting times under circumstances that probably would make anyone go a bit loopy. But her general outlook on people at the end of the day is also, to sum up simply, "love and freedom".

I remember one review of an album of hers saying that in interviews Hagen comes across like someone who read a bit of eastern philosophy the night before and became way too excited with the concepts and images, and I think that describes her well.

She still has some excellent music and I believe her heart is in the right place.

She gets points from me for demonstrating how women should masturbate on Austrian television in 1979 - and defending it afterwards, saying basically: "I escaped from a dictatorship where everything is censored. If the West believes in freedom, then the Austrians shouldn't be so upset with what I did."

PS didn't the Foo Fighters also used to believe that AIDS medication caused the disease rather than HIV, or something? I seem to recall them talking about it in the 90s.

Cosmic Shiva!!!

I prefer Jean Hagen.

"Iki Maska" is kind of the centrepiece of Nunsexmonkrock - I have counted so many songs in it that she is singing all over the place, it's really fun. And I'm probably still missing a lot: "Kinderleider", "O Sole Mio", "Ashes to Ashes", "Let's Do the Split", "Der kleine Trompeter", "Das Lied von der Moldau", "Havanna Lied", "Ziggy Stardust" and "Seeräuber Jenny".

R17 If you’re pissing off snooty uptight woke queers in San Francisco, you’re definitely doing something right.

Neun-und-neunzig Luftballons...

R24 That song was by German band Nena, in 1983. Often confused with Nina Hagen.

I took a master class with Uta Hagen.

Nina Hagen with Don Rickles on Merv Griffin. Nutty interview that gets slightly awkward when Rickles quips: "And they wonder why they lost the war", and Nina responds: "Well, I'm Jewish, so..."

R27 LOL!

My favorite

That's a really great cover, R29. Different from the original, but still really catchy.

She gives me Fever

Creepy song only found on the German version of the Fearless album ("Angstlos").