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Nena

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Nena (born Gabriele Susanne Kerner on March 24, 1960 in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany) acquired her nickname “Nena”, which means “girl” in Spanish, at the age of 3 during a vacation to Spain.

Her first band was called The Stripes. They had a very minor hit with the song “Ecstasy”, but never managed to achieve broad success.

The band Nena was formed with Nena (singer), Rolf Brendel (drums), Carlo Karges (guitar), Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen (keyboard) and Jürgen Dehmel (bass) in Berlin in 1981. Their first hit single, “Nur geträumt” (“Only In Dreams”), came in 1982 after appearing on the German television program Musikladen.

The following year they released their self-titled first album, which contained the singles “99 Luftballons” and “Leuchtturm” (“Lighthouse”). “99 Luftballons” was a #1 hit in many countries (including the U.S.) and an English version of the song, “99 Red Balloons”, was recorded, and retains some measure of cultural influence, being referred to in current music - the Guster track Amsterdam. The song also featured in an episode of Scrubs, Gilmore Girls the film, Grosse Point Blank, and most recently the movie Watchmen. Nena then released ? (Fragezeichen) in 1984, Feuer und Flamme (“Fire And Flame”, means “to be all for it”) in 1985, Eisbrecher (“Icebreaker”) in 1986. During her success in the UK, Nena was also famous for having hairy armpits, which in the UK was unusual for a woman to have.

Nena started dating Swiss actor Benedict Freitag shortly after the breakup of the band in 1987, and together with him had a son, Christopher Daniel, who was born disabled due to medical mistakes made during the birth that caused Nena to go into cardiac arrest.
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99 Luftballons full track
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Nur geträumt full track
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Rette mich full track
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Wunder gescheh'n full track
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Vollmond full track
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? (Fragezeichen) full track
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