Oldschool (Nena album)
| Oldschool | ||||
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| Studio album by Nena | ||||
| Released | 27 February 2015 | |||
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| Length | 54:39 | |||
| Language | German | |||
| Label | The Laugh and Peas Company | |||
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| Singles from Oldschool | ||||
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Oldschool is the seventeenth studio album by German recording artist Nena. Having received some negative publicity at the time of the release of her previous album Du bist gut for refusing in interviews to talk about the 1980s, Nena chose to celebrate the past with her next studio album. The first single released from the album, "Lieder von früher" ("Songs from the Past"), enthuses about the pleasure of dancing to old records, and the title track (not to be confused with "Oldschool, Baby", Nena's 2002 duet with WestBam) happily reflects on Nena's being best known for a few songs from the 1980s. The album was produced by the Hamburg hip-hop artist and rapper Samy Deluxe and features a duet with Nena’s eldest surviving son, Sakias. Although published on Nena's own record label, The Laugh and Peas Company, distribution rights were agreed with Sony Music, 22 years after the company dropped Nena as a recording artist following the indifferent performance of her second solo album Bongo Girl.
Oldschool received a mixed reception.
Writing for the "Süddeutsche" newspaper online Max Fellmann identifies the "common threads" of the album as, "Nena's age... the passing of time and the horror of how long ago the 80s are already". Describing the album as involving, "a bit too much computer", he identifies its highlight as "Berufsjugendlich" ("Professional Teen") which is, "so smart that you have to laugh", with a lyric which, "takes the wind out of the sails of any critic". A drawback, however, is that he could not "find the one really big hit even after repeated listening".
"Laut.de" (a site that gives all Nena albums a negative review) maintained their record of excoriating Nena’s work by awarding Oldschool one star out of five and describing it as an album, "bringing together things which should be separated as soon as possible", including Nena and the album’s producer Samy Deluxe, "fifteen years too late". The reviewer did, however, admit to being taken aback by one track "Bruder" ("Brother"), a song about Nena’s first son who died in 1989 at the age of 11 months. Of this song he wrote, "for one single time Nena allows a glimpse behind her eternal façade... for a moment the singer is genuine, quite herself and in this way arouses honest emotions".
In "Musik review" Thomas Meurer wrote that, despite having never liked Nena’s voice, he was "pleasantly surprised by the album", especially, "the shreds of music, reminiscent of the good old Neue Deutsche Welle time".
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