NUNSEXMONKROCK
NunSexMonkRock is the debut studio album by German singer Nina Hagen. It was released on June 12, 1982 by CBS Records. It marked Hagen’s first release since her departure from the Nina Hagen Band and was also her first album with all songs in English language. The lyrics deal with various themes including motherhood, religion, drug abuse, and UFOs. Musically, NunSexMonkRock is an experimental rock with influences of post-punk and new wave music. Commercially, the album achieved a moderate success. In the United States, it peaked at number 184 on the Billboard 200. (More from Wikipedia)
Born in East Berlin, Nina Hagen was gaining a reputation for being a flamboyant rock singer before she emigrated to the West in 1976. With the Nina Hagen Band, she made two albums for CBS Germany Records and then released her first English-language album, NunSexMonkRock in 1982, where she displays the multi-octave range of her voice. Her music blends an eccentric punk-rock vibe with a true theatrical sensibility.
Surprisingly, Nina Hagen’s Christianity simmers beneath the surface of her music. On “Anti World”, the opening track of NunSexMonkRock – where she poses as the Madonna on the album cover – Nina Hagen relates a Biblical account of an encounter by Jesus with a man who is possessed by a demon:
Once upon a time
When Jesus was walking down his way on earth
He met this man who was possessed by a demon
And Jesus asked the man :
Why do you speak so funny
Why do you behave like that
And the man said
Why Jesus ? because I am possessed by a demon
God ! Jesus said,
And the demon went down into the pig,
And the pig was running away screaming.
And the man was free
Do you see if you only could believe, Jesus said
Everything is possible for those who believe.
(November 2014)
