Nena

Gabriele Susanne Kerner (born 24 March 1960), better known by her stage name Nena, is a German singer who rose to international fame in 1983 as the lead vocalist of the band Nena with the Neue Deutsche Welle song "99 Luftballons". In that same year, the band re-recorded this song in English as "99 Red Balloons". Nena's re-recording of some of the band's old hit songs as a solo artist, produced by the co-composer of most of them, her former Nena band colleague and keyboard player Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, rekindled her solo career in 2002. Combined with the success of the Nena band years, she has sold over 25 million records, making her the most successful German pop singer in chart history.

Early life

Gabriele Susanne Kerner was born on 24 March 1960 in Hagen, West Germany while her family was living in the nearby town of Breckerfeld. She was the oldest of three children; her father was a teacher. She spent the earliest part of her childhood in Breckerfeld and later lived in Hagen. She acquired her nickname Nena while on a vacation to Mallorca, Spain, with her parents. Nena (from Nena) is a Catalan (native language in Balearic Islands) word meaning "baby girl". In 1977, she left high school before gaining the Abitur, and in the three following years she was trained as a goldsmith, which she left before obtaining her journeyman's licence.

Musical career

Beginnings

Nena's musical career began on 2 July 1979 when guitarist Rainer Kitzmann founded the Stripes and, on the basis of having seen her dancing at a local disco, asked her to audition for the position of the lead singer. The group, based in Hagen, performed songs with English lyrics and had a minor hit with the song "Ecstasy", but never achieved mainstream success and disbanded on 3 March 1982. However, The Stripes's record company, CBS, offered Nena a record deal if she would move to Berlin and make music with German lyrics. In May 1982, Nena and her then-boyfriend Rolf Brendel moved to West Berlin, where they met future band members guitarist Carlo Karges, keyboard player Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, and bass player Jürgen Dehmel. Together, they formed the band Nena. In June 1982, they released their first single, "Nur geträumt", which became an instant hit in Germany after the band appeared on the German television show Musikladen on 21 August 1982. The single reportedly sold 40,000 copies the day after the song appeared on the show and reached No. 2 in the German charts.

1982–1987: International success and band breakup

In 1983, the band released its first album Nena, which contained the singles "99 Luftballons" and "Leuchtturm". "99 Luftballons" became a number one hit in West Germany and the Netherlands in 1983 and went on to major international chart success the following year, an English version hitting No. 1 in the UK and the original German version hitting No. 2 in the US, behind Van Halen's "Jump". In 1984, Casey Kasem's radio show American Top 40 introduced a "mixed" version of the song, "splicing" the German and English versions together.

In May 1984, while on a tour in the UK, Nena made the headlines of the British red-top press for having unshaved armpits. While not uncommon in continental Europe at the time, this was considered unusual in English-speaking countries to the extent that some consider it an explanation for the commercial failure of the follow-ups to "99 Luftballons". Baffled by the attention generated, Nena asked her manager's girlfriend to shave her and has remained clean shaven ever since. Referring to the "huge indignation" the issue raised, Nena, in her memoirs published in 2005, wrote, "Can a girl from Hagen, who dreams of the big wide world and is in love with Mick Jagger, have no idea that girls can't under any circumstances have hair under the arm? Yes she can. I simply had no idea!"

Although "99 Luftballons" was Nena's only hit in the English-speaking world, the band continued to enjoy success in several European countries in the following years including with the single "Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann". Nena's next international single "Just a Dream" (an English language re-issue of "Nur geträumt") reached No. 70 in the UK charts in 1984; it had "Indianer" on the B-side. A dance version of "Just a Dream" was released in the 1990s to a new audience and became a club anthem. The band split in 1987 and Nena went solo thereafter.

1989: Launch of solo career

Nena's first solo album Wunder gescheh'n was released on 5 November 1989. The title track (German for "Miracles Happen"), composed by Nena herself, relates to the fact that Nena was at the time pregnant with twins, but release of the album that appeared just four days before the fall of the Berlin Wall (on 9 November) and the fact that she performed the song at the end of the Konzert für Berlin three days later has ever since associated it with that historic event. It was to prove to be her last major hit of the 20th century as throughout the 1990s her albums and singles – although often critically acclaimed – were less commercially successful. In 1993, following the indifferent performance of her second solo album Bongo Girl, Sony decided not to renew Nena's recording contract, and the label which distributed her third album, RMG Music Entertainment, disappeared shortly afterwards. In 1995, Nena and her growing family moved from Berlin to Hamburg, borrowing money from a family friend in order to do so since her bank declined to extend credit.

2002: Return to chart success

In 2002, Nena celebrated her 20th anniversary on stage with the album Nena feat. Nena, a disc produced by Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen (her former band colleague and author of almost all of the band's and her chart successes) and consisting of newly arranged recordings of the band's hits from the 1980s. This album marked a comeback for Nena, and spawned a number of successful chart entries. The remake of "Anyplace, Anywhere, Anytime" as an English-German duet with Kim Wilde was a hit in various European countries, reaching the No. 1 spot in the Netherlands and Austria, and No. 3 in Germany, in 2003.

Having regalvanised her career by virtue of the band's 1980s hits, Nena reestablished herself as a force with entirely new material (produced again by Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen) with the 2005 album Willst du mit mir gehn which quickly achieved platinum status and climbed to No. 2 in the German charts. The first single from the album, "Liebe ist", reached No. 1 on the German charts in early 2005, and was the theme song for a German telenovela, Verliebt in Berlin. It reached the top position 22 years after "99 Luftballons", the longest span between first and last number one in German chart history.

In October 2007, Nena released a new album entitled Cover Me, made up entirely of cover songs. David Bowie, Rolling Stones and Rammstein are three of the bands covered. She also released the single, "Ich kann nix dafür" in April 2007 for the film, Vollidiot, and her cover of "She's a Rainbow" by the Rolling Stones in the US and the UK. In 2009 she recorded and released a new version of her hit song "99 Luftballons", which more closely follows the 1980s original, in contrast to her 2002 version. This song was first performed in Germany on 6 September 2009. Some parts of the new version are in French.

2009: Own record label

Since 2009, Nena's releases have been published by her own record label, The Laugh & Peas Company, which also promotes the work of her daughter's group (Adameva) and that of one of her protegées from The Voice of Germany, Sharron Levy.

Nena released a new single on 18 September 2009, called "Wir sind wahr", and a new album on 2 October: Made in Germany. The autobiographical ballad from the album "In meinem Leben" became her fourteenth top 10 hit in Germany, taking her to 12th position in the all-time list of top 10 hits in Germany, the third highest placed German act and top German female. She also collaborated with the popular techno-rap artists Die Atzen to produce a new single, "Strobo Pop". In 2011, she contributed vocals to the track "Let Go Tonight" by Kevin Costner and Modern West.

In late 2012, Nena released her 11th solo studio album, Du bist gut, which peaked at No. 2 in the German charts, although the tracks released as singles from the album were not as successful as those from her previous albums since her 2002 comeback.