Cologne (dpa) – There comes a moment in conversation with Lavi, whose real name is Christina Klein, when you think of Britney Spears. Much has been reported about the American pop singer in recent years, but little about her musical exploits.
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It often had to do with how Spears struggled with professional and personal issues after her early success as a pop star. It looks like LaFee has been following this closely. She used to be what was called a teenage star at the time.
“I can sympathize with that because I know parts of it myself,” Lavie says. “At that time you couldn’t even walk to the tour bus without at least 20 people trying to get on the bus.” The difference: With Christina Klein, no drama followed. “Fortunately, my family never said, ‘You have to! Do it!'” , Says. “But: come into our arms, you are safe here.”
When you talk to LaFee, it’s often about what it was like when you take a break or gather your strength. “I’ve never had a day off a year,” she says. “When other people celebrated Christmas or New Year’s Eve, I would go to a show.”
The singer, born in Stolberg near Aachen in 1990, wasn’t even of legal age when she hit the German charts in 2006. She never became a favorite of critics, but she met a generation of passions with German Wiltschmers lyrics. Anyone who has watched the music channel Viva – for a long time a pioneering type of youth culture media – has seen LaFee all the time. In 2011, however, it increasingly withdrew after an album (“Frei”). Musically it became very quiet.
This is now over. On Friday (August 20), a comeback album called “Back to the Future” will be released approx. A famous movie by Michael J. Fox (60), about time travel, of the same title. Heroes change the past – and at times are amazed at how much intervention they have plunged the present and the future into chaos.
Lavi, a ’90s kid, immerses himself in the sound of the ’80s somewhat surprisingly. They cover all kinds of classics from the Rubik’s Cube necklace, such as Madonna’s “Material Girl”, “I Want To Dance With Someone” by Whitney Houston or “When It Starts To Rain” by Jermaine Jackson and Pia Zadora. There are also some new songs – but with the same look. It’s the kind of comeback you wouldn’t have expected.
LaFee tells of the reasons she associates this with music at home. Like her parents’ music. “She was manipulated. I grew up with her.” Producer Christian Geller has another explanation: The ’80s are hip. “When you hear The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’, which was the biggest hit of all time last year, you have to say, ‘It actually sounds like a-ha’ ‘Take on Me’,” he says. W: At least Lavi’s voice always reminds him of young Nina (“99 Balloons”).
In fact, LaFee is now more danceable than it used to be — and easily accessible to audiences who don’t escape the word “Schlager.” Fittingly, she had a big debut in 2021 at Florian Silbereisen, which – if you will – became a leading new medium for successful German music. FIFA no longer exists.
If you’re looking for the clearest traces of the time-traveling ability on the album, you’ll definitely end up with song three, “Rock Me Amadeus.” It’s actually a duet with Falco, who died in 1998. Producer Geller thinks this is a sensation because it’s a “real new recording with the original sound”. It took long discussions. “But the community of heirs dealt with LaFee and finally said: It could have been in Falco’s view.”
