Beyond fifty

60th birthday of Nino De Angelo - Beyond fifty

The fact that Nino De Angelo (60) managed to climb to the top of the German charts once again in 2021 will have filled him with the greatest satisfaction. After all, for almost forty years he was considered a flawless one-hit wonder, associated exclusively with his 1983 super-hit "Jenseits von Eden". However, the success of this work was so monumental that it still resonates today. No one who owned a radio or television set in the early 1980s will ever be able to get the song out of their head again.

A pop masterpiece with a socially critical note

In addition to the drastic use of synthesizers and the undisguised pathos of the vocals, it is above all the unusual lyrics of this pop masterpiece that continue to ring in the ears. At the height of the environmental movement and the arms race, Nino De Angelo and his producer dared to write dystopian lyrics that were previously unthinkable in the still strictly idealized world of pop music. Lines that not only referred to current human problems, but also posed the question of the meaning of life.

The very first verse of the song has it all: "When even a child no longer laughs like a child / Then we are beyond Eden / When we don't feel / The earth, it weeps / Like no other planet / Then we have lived in vain". By the time De Angelo belted out the moving lines "Someday I have to go forever / Then I want to say / This world was beautiful" in the song's finale, everyone had understood that something urgently needed to change on this sad planet.

40 years of "Jenseits von Eden", 60 years of Nino

When "Jenseits von Eden" entered the German charts on November 21, 1983 and stayed at number one for seven weeks, De Angelo was just 19 years old and only turned twenty around a month later, on December 18. Shortly after the 40th anniversary of the world improvement anthem, its interpreter celebrates his 60th birthday today, December 18, 2023 - and is thus finally beyond fifty.

Even though the singer, who was born in Karlsruhe in 1963, must have had a lot of fun and many a happy hour over the past forty years, from the outside looking in, his career has been an endless succession of commercial failures and personal disasters. During these four decades, De Angelo broke up four marriages, had to file for bankruptcy twice due to high debts and battled various serious illnesses. He made drug confessions in talk shows and interviews and found himself on the hard floor of the "Promi Big Brother" container in 2015. Until 2021, every one of his albums, which he released at irregular intervals, flopped without exception.

Breaking out of the pop prison

Things only started to look up when Nino De Angelo decided to leave the pop business for good in 2018. In the German newspaper Bild , he announced: "I will never sing Schlager again. The industry is dishonest and indifferent. The same people are always invited to the big shows on Carmen Nebel and Florian Silbereisen. They're all as smooth as a child's bottom. The new generation doesn't get a chance, everything is in full playback. I didn't go along with that anymore."

In further interviews, the singer confessed that he had never been happy with his role as a pop singer. He told the magazine "Wildwechsel" : "I never really stood behind 90 percent of my songs. I recorded 250 songs and 20 albums and yet I was never the pop type. This pure pop thing never suited me. I was always caught between two stools."

Peter Maffay advised the singer to pursue a rock career

In "Prisma", he stated that he had made far too many artistic compromises in his musical career. He had actually wanted to switch to rock music since the nineties, but was unable to push through with it. "I had to listen to the record company, to the management. They told me 'Then we won't get any more gigs' or 'Oh, then we won't get played there'. Compromises can sometimes be good, but in my case it was absolutely the wrong thing to do."

Even very successful colleagues had advised him to give up pop music in order to pursue a career as a rocker:"Peter Maffay once said to me, I remember it clearly: 'You can actually clean all of us: Grönemeyer, Westernhagen and me. You just have to get tougher with your music, much tougher'."

Mega comeback with a dark rock hit

In 2021, Nino De Angelo actually got down to business and landed his breathtaking comeback with a genuine dark rock record. "Gesegnet und verflucht", produced by the singer of the dark rock band Lord of the Lost, catapulted the former pop star back to the top of the charts for the first time (albeit only at number 2) and, with over 100,000 units sold, gave him his first gold record since 1984. In May 2023, he followed this up with the even heavier and darker album "Von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit", which also sold well.

In addition to the musical reorientation, these albums are characterized above all by the fact that the lyrics are much more personal and autobiographical. Here, Nino sings about the real De Angelo and relentlessly reviews his life to date with all its ups and downs. For example, in the song "Gesegnet und verflucht": "How often have I stood alone in the rain / Today I only know, that's life / When you're on top, everything is easy / When it goes down, you pay threefold."

Only "Jenseits von Eden" is allowed in Nino's new life

The singer told the "Abendzeitung München " newspaper that authenticity will be his top priority in future: "If I'm not authentic and autobiographical, I won't be successful. If I do something that my heart isn't in, it doesn't work. I've found that out after all this time."

With his radical new start, Nino De Angelo wants to leave the past four decades as a pop star behind him for good and take nothing with him. However, with one important exception: "There is only one song from back then that I will continue to sing today" he revealed to the portal "TAG24". And that, of course, is "Jenseits von Eden".