Nena

Nena rose to prominence starting in 1982 as one of the biggest pop acts Germany had produced, propelled above all by the rare breakthrough of the German-language single "99 Luftballons" inside the U.S. market in 1984. Born Gabriele Kerner, she had already logged a year fronting the Stripes, a band that split after issuing only one unsuccessful album in 1980, before putting together a new Berlin group she called Nena. Its roster featured Nena on vocals, Carlo Karges on guitar, Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen on keyboards, Jürgen Dehmel on bass, and Rolf Brendel on drums. After the ensemble’s debut TV slot on Musikladen dated August 21, 1982, the single “Nur Geträumt” climbed to number one throughout the German-speaking territories. “99 Luftballons” arrived soon afterward and became a global hit, yet by mid-1985 both record sales and turnout for her tour dates had fallen sharply, prompting the band’s breakup in mid-1987. From 1989 she operated as a solo artist, issuing albums whose songs she wrote chiefly with musician friends she picked as co-authors and without maintaining any standing band for studio or stage work, as she had done throughout the 1980s. Her first solo tour occurred in 1993; pregnancies then kept her from most live work until 1997. She resumed touring, chiefly inside Germany and once or twice each year, backed primarily by American musicians supplemented by German players. Throughout the 1990s she appeared often on German television, among other duties hosting the variety series Metro in 1993. She held to her signature mix of melodic vocals over rock styles that stretched from the Beatles to the tougher edges of the Rolling Stones and even the Ramones, favoring the heavier sound especially on the road. Beginning in 1990 she also released multiple albums aimed at children and supplied voice-overs or songs for animated features and cartoon series. When the ambitious, electronics-driven album Chokmah from 2001 drew scant notice, she marked the twentieth anniversary of her breakthrough in 2002 by releasing Feat. Nena: Live, a set of new versions of her earlier hits. The response proved unexpectedly strong, matching the runaway success of two decades earlier. The double album of fresh material that followed in 2005, Willst Du Mit Mir Gehn (half of which unveiled a heavier rock approach), again reached platinum, showing she had secured a firm foothold with a new generation of listeners. Cover Me, a 2007 album of covers, presented her own readings of songs by the Rolling Stones and Moby among others. In 2009 she issued her sixteenth studio album, Made in Germany, which was followed in 2010 by both the live set Made in Germany Live and Best of Nena. Du Bist Gut appeared two years later. Oldschool, fusing new wave, punk, and contemporary EDM, surfaced in 2015 and prolonged her run of more than ten consecutive Top Ten albums in Germany.