Nina Hagen – Highway to Heaven
Nina Hagen, the 71-year-old punk goddess from East Berlin, releases her twentieth studio album with “Highway to Heaven”, a gospel record that arrives four years after “Unity” and fifteen years after her previous gospel venture “Personal Jesus”.
Let us first clear up a misunderstanding. Nina Hagen did not disappear. She released “Unity” in 2022 and continued to perform, but the world paid less attention than before. And that is precisely the point. Catharina Hagen, born in 1955 in the GDR, was once a cultural phenomenon representing a generation that had something to say and said it, loudly and defiantly, across five octaves. That era is long gone. What remains is an artist who never betrayed herself, but for whom the world has moved on.
“Highway to Heaven” is her second gospel album, and the question you inevitably ask while listening is: who is this actually for? Producer Warner Poland builds a framework of Southern gospel, Americana, reggae and punk, within which Hagen reinterprets fourteen classics by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mahalia Jackson and Kitty Wells. That she does so with full conviction is beyond doubt. Her faith is not an image, it is her engine.
The opener “Everybody’s Gonna Have a Wonderful Time Up There” sets the tone: upbeat, slightly absurd, and with the directness that has always been Hagen’s greatest weapon. Anyone familiar with her screaming glory on “Wir Leben Immer Noch” from 1979 will hear a singer who keeps her limits, yet within those limits still delivers more personality than most artists today. The highlight is “There’s a Highway to Heaven”, a tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, performed with Danish singer Gitte Hænning. The combination of two voices, each with its own weight and colour, gives the song something the rest of the album does not always achieve.
Then there is the duet with Nana Mouskouri on “Never Grow Old”. Whoever came up with this deserves special mention. Two legendary veterans mumbling through a gospel classic with Americana arrangements and a seriousness that makes the whole situation even more absurd. It is either genius or completely ridiculous, and probably both at once. That is also why the album resonates in Germany, not for musical revelation, but for its tongue in cheek qualities that you almost feel guilty for enjoying. “Somebody Prayed for Me” and “Hand It Over”, the latter with blues and rock singer Daniel Welbat, are where the energy hits hardest. Here you still hear something of the artist who once turned everything upside down.
The reggae excursions on “Dry Bones”, “Dust on the Bible” and “Gospel Ship” fall flat. They do not fit the rest of the album and feel like last minute additions to the setlist. On a 41 minute album, those three tracks drain too much energy.
No one was waiting for “Highway to Heaven”. Nina Hagen likely knew that herself. But she made it anyway, in her own inimitable and slightly incomprehensible way. The album is neither a statement nor a comeback. It is what it is: a 71 year old woman singing gospel with Nana Mouskouri, and fully believing in it. That deserves respect, and somewhere also a smile. But it is no longer great art. (6/10) (Grönland Records)
