Nadine Finsterbusch “You Make Me Forget”

Nadine Finsterbusch does not look back

Nadine Finsterbusch is not interested in expectations for women her age.
With her upcoming album MY SPACE she wants to make room and take space. For an impetuous feeling of youth, uninhibited fandom and big feelings.
The 44-year-old artist concludes with experiences that have shaped her adulthood. Early menopause, breaches of trust or failed friendships. It is time for something new. With a certain mood for optimism that we probably experienced in our youth for the last time, she makes it clear that it´s about the here and now.
There is this kind of youthful despite in her voice of these 10 electropop songs on her first solo album MY SPACE. And opens a door to what most grown ups have buried somewhere between shopping lists and work-life-balance: her revived teenage self, brave, unironically emotional and without any bitterness.
In her first single “You Make me Forget”, Finsterbusch makes it clear who is in control of her life: herself. “Don’t tell me what to do now” she proclaims in the album opener. Framed by steady beats of an electronic snare and accompanied by a prancing electric guitar, Finsterbusch’s voice makes its way through the increasingly dense thicket of synths – “No, I don’t look back” – until at the end she lets herself be taken in by a booming and glowing soundscape. Sound backdrop. She repeats “I’ve been around” like a calming mantra, as if she is now focusing her strength before launching fully into the album.
Nadine Finsterbusch’s vehement and innocent-sounding vocals are not accidentally reminiscent of Björk. The singer was Finsterbusch’s earliest and most formative inspiration: “I secretly watched MTV when I was 13. When I saw Björk for the first time, I knew: that’s what I wanted to do that,” she says. Most recently, Finsterbusch had lived out her love of electronic avant-garde pop in the band project Phinsterbush. “Magnets”, the project’s first and last album, was released in 2017. Now it’s time for Nadine Finsterbusch to do her own thing. And it’s poppier, more playful, more honest. “As a solo artist, I can express myself differently than in a band context,” says Finsterbusch. This is how her songs for the album emerged from her gut. “What comes out, is right,” thought Finsterbusch during the creative process. The songs are snapshots, created impulsively. “I only understood the meaning of some of the songs in retrospect.” Disappointments and hurt feelings have flowed into the songs, but also the dealing with the early onset of the menopause, the accompanying mood swings and the finality of childlessness. She found the right musical framework for this together with producer Ramin Bijan, with whom she has already realized several projects and who, among other things, worked with the band “Die Türen” or Robert Forster. Finsterbusch greatly appreciates working with Ramin Bijan because he gives her the space to trust and express herself. But perhaps the most important influence on Finsterbusch’s current creative work is K-Pop. “Without the band BTS, the album probably wouldn’t exist,” says Finsterbusch. Discovered during seemingly endless corona lockdowns, the guys from BTS dug themselves deeper and deeper into Finsterbusch’s heart. The fact that she would feel so much fan love again in her early 40s surprised herself.
So much so that she lists all the BTS band members in the song “Make Some Time”. “That was actually a spontaneous improvisation that we then left in the song,” she says. So there it is again, the unspent joy of experimentation that characterizes Nadines Finsterbusch’s album “My Space”. And speaking of “My Space”: the association with THE musical social network of the noughties is unintentional but fits in well with the youthful just-do-it vibe. “My Space” is intended to make much clearer: This is my space, my feel-good place. And that Finsterbusch would also like to create for others.
Nadine Finsterbusch doesn’t need advice from supposedly serious music experts. On the contrary: “Why so serious?” she asks in the song of the same name. “My Space” is an invitation to indulge in all feelings without irony. Just like we did as teenagers.

Listen to “You Make Me Forget“, released on January 23rd 2024
The album “My Space“ will be out on April 5th.

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