Nino de Angelo’s career went steeply downhill after his mega hit “Jen beyond Eden” – until he discovered the dark rocker in him.
The fact that Nino De Angelo (60) managed to reach the top of the German charts again in 2021 will have given him great satisfaction. After all, for almost forty years he was considered a flawless one-hit wonder, who was only associated with his 1983 super hit “Jen beyond Eden”. However, the success of this work was so monumental that it still resonates today. No one who owned a radio or television in the early ’80s will ever be able to get the song out of their head.
Schlager masterpiece with a socially critical note
In addition to the drastic use of synthesizers and the undisguised pathos of the singing, it is above all the unusual lyrics of this pop masterpiece that continues to ring in your ears. At the height of the environmental movement and the arms race, Nino De Angelo and his producer dared to write dystopian lines that were previously unthinkable in the hit world, which was still strictly intact at the time. Lines that not only referred to current human problems, but also asked the question of the meaning of life.
The first verse of the song is already telling: “If even a child no longer laughs like a child / Then we are beyond Eden / If we don’t feel / The earth, it cries / Like no other planet / Then we have nothing “lived”. By the time De Angelo belted out the moving lines “At some point I have to go forever / Then I want to say / This world was beautiful” in the song’s finale, everyone understood that something urgently needed to change on this sad planet.
40 years of “East of Eden”, 60 years of Nino
As “East of Eden” on November 21st. When De Angelo entered the German charts in 1983 and stayed at number one for seven weeks, De Angelo was just 19 years old. It wasn’t until around a month later, on December 18th, that he turned twenty. Shortly after the 40th anniversary of the world improvement anthem, its interpreter is celebrating his 60th birthday today, December 18, 2023 – and is therefore finally beyond fifty.
Even though the singer, who was born in Karlsruhe in 1963, may have had a lot of fun and many a happy hour over the past forty years, viewed from the outside, his subsequent career read like an endless series of commercial defeats and private catastrophes. During these four decades, De Angelo wore out four marriages, had to file for personal bankruptcy twice due to high debts and struggled with various serious illnesses. He made drug confessions in talk shows and interviews and found himself on the hard floor of the “Celebrity Big Brother” container in 2015. Until 2021, all of his albums, which he released at irregular intervals, flopped without exception.
Breaking out of Schlager prison
Things only started to look up when Nino De Angelo decided to finally leave the hit business in 2018. In the “Bild” newspaper he announced: “I will never sing hits again. The industry is lying and indifferent. The same people are always invited to the big shows with Carmen Nebel and Florian Silbereisen. They are all as smooth as a child’s bottom. The young people don’t get a chance, “Everything is in full playback. I didn’t take part anymore.”
In further interviews, the singer admitted that he was never happy with his role as a pop singer. Dem Magazine “Animal Crossing” He explained: “I never really stood behind 90 percent of my songs. I recorded at least 250 songs and 20 albums and yet was never the hit type. This pure hit thing never suited me. I always sat between the chairs.”
Peter Maffay advised the singer to pursue a rock career
He stated in the “Prisma”., having made far too many artistic compromises in his musical career. He had actually wanted to switch to rock music since the 1990s, but wasn’t able to get 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 be played there anymore’. Compromises can sometimes be good, but for me it was absolutely the wrong thing. “
Even very successful colleagues 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 groom us all: Grönemeyer, Westernhagen and me . You just have to get harder with your music, much harder.'”
Mega comeback with a dark rock hit
In 2021, Nino De Angelo actually nailed it and made his breathtaking comeback with a real dark rock record. “Blessed and Cursed”, 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 gave him sales of over 100,000 units the first gold record since 1984. In May 2023 he followed up with the much harder and darker album “From Eternity to Eternity”, which also sold well.
In addition to the musical realignment, what characterizes these albums is that the song lyrics are much more personal and autobiographical. Here Nino sings about the real De Angelo and relentlessly reviews his life so far with all its ups and downs. For example in the piece “Blessed and Cursed”: “How many times have I stood alone in the rain / Today I just know that’s how life is / When you’re up, everything is easy / When things go down, you pay triple.”
Only “Out of Eden” is allowed into Nino’s new life
The “Evening newspaper Munich” The singer explained that authenticity will be his top priority in the future: “If I’m not authentic and autobiographical, I won’t be successful. If I do something that I don’t have my heart attached to, it won’t work. That’s what I have after all this Found out in time.”
With his radical new start, Nino De Angelo wants to finally leave the last four decades as a pop star behind him and not take anything with him. However, with one important exception: “There is only one song from back then that I will still sing today and continue to sing.” he revealed the “TAG24” portal. And of course it is “East of Eden”.