Nu Pagadi

Nu Pagadi formed as a quartet in November 2004 and quickly scored a German number-one debut single with “Sweetest Poison,” released the following month. Their full-length album, Your Dark Side, arrived on January 3, 2005, and likewise reached the top of the charts. Although the four members—Pat Boinet, Kris Dörfer, Markus Grimm, and Doreen Steinert—called their style “glam rock,” the songs were essentially pop overlaid with industrial-metal textures, while the uniform stage look of heavy makeup on all members and an all-black wardrobe leaned far more goth than glam. As graduates of the fourth season of the international television series Popstars, the group’s awkwardly assembled identity was hardly surprising. The album stood out for being recorded entirely in English and for containing a cover of Billy Idol’s “Flesh for Fantasy”; its artwork, showing the four young musicians lying together in the nude, supplied an unmistakably erotic charge. That visual emphasis proved central for Steinert and Dörfer in particular. The two tall, toned, sassy, and sexy women launched solo careers almost immediately after the band dissolved. Under the name Doreen, Steinert issued the maxi-CD Ich Bin Meine Eigene Frau in October 2006; three weeks earlier, Dörfer, performing as Kris, had released her own maxi-CD, Room for More. Both women abandoned the faux-goth metal of Nu Pagadi for a livelier, more playful sound and image that highlighted their physical appeal.