? (QUESTION MARK)  ? (Fragezeichen) (German for “Question mark”) is the second album by German pop-rock band Nena and the third studio album to feature its lead singer, Gabriele “Nena” Kerner. It was released in 1984, just a few months before the band’s first international album 99 Luftballons (1984), which contains songs from their debut album Nena (1983) and this album, some of them re-recorded with English lyrics. Like its self-titled predecessor, this album was produced by Reinhold Heil and Manne Praeker of Spliff. (More from Wikipedia) Speaking of Germans, I went into a long discussion of Neue Deutsche Welle (“German New Wave”) in my article on one of the coolest UARB’s of them all, Ja Ja Ja; and I never once mentioned the most successful of those bands: Nena. Their worldwide 1983 hit song “99 Luftballons” was in heavy rotation on MTV long before the English-language version, “99 Red Balloons” came along. (The only English words in the original song were “Captain Kirk”). I might have an excuse if that was all I knew about them, but actually, I had three of their albums and a cassette to boot – one was completely German language, and if anything, I like their German songs better than their English ones. One big favorite: “?” (yeah, that’s the name of the song, and often paired with the German word for “question mark”, Fragezeichen). I am often patting myself on the back about how good my current article is turning out, and then I make an inexcusable omission like that.
(April 2013)
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