nena

I'm afraid I've developed an addiction to Nena's album of covers, Cover Me.
(to the non-German part of my audience I need to explain that Nena, of 99 red balloons fame, was anything but a one hit wonder in Germany and has recorded lots of albums with her own music, too).

The fact that I like Nena is a bit odd, as I hate 80s music and I didn't like German pop all that much until the new wave of Silbermond / Juli etc. came up. So Nena is the one exception to both rules.

The Cover me album has one disk with covers of German songs, and another one with English covers (and one in French). I don't care much for the German disk, but the English one has lots of tracks that take me right back to my childhood -- the Dylan / Stones / Neil Young kind of mix that could have come straight from one of the tapes my mother used to listen to when I was maybe 10 or so. And amazingly, these songs work very well with Nena's voice. It's the kind of longing encapsulated in these songs (After the goldrush, it's all over now baby blue, she's a rainbow, the last time, ... ) that her voice fits so well with. Intriguing.