Fearless by Nina Hagen

Fearless, the English-language version of Nina Hagen's Angstlos, came out on November 4, 1983, a few months after the German edition, and anyone expecting more of the wild experiments on NunSexMonkRock got a jolt. With Giorgio Moroder and Keith Forsey producing, the East Berlin-born woman they call the Godmother of German Punk dives headfirst onto the dance floor: disco pulse, dance-pop gloss, even a taste of hip hop, with that theatrical, anything-goes voice ricocheting off the machines.

Critics split on the switch, but the clubs didn't. "New York New York" climbed to number nine on Billboard's dance club chart, and "Zarah", her take on a Zarah Leander song, reached number 45 there. There's a curio, too: "What It Is" was written by Flea and Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Hagen put it out almost a year before their own debut album.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.