People: “Now more than” Marianne Rosenberg will be 70

Marianne Rosenberg celebrates a triple, so to speak. In addition to her 70th birthday, one of her biggest hits “He belongs to me” 50 years old – with the catchy tune she also became an icon of the queer community. In addition, the singer is now on stage for 55 years.

“I have a lot to celebrate. It’s completely crazy,” she says to the German press agency with a view to the anniversaries. First of all, today (March 10) is the first birthday of the artist born in Berlin in 1955. Rosenberg faces him calmly.

Rosenberg: Society locks things like aging

“I don’t necessarily deal with the fact that time passes. Time doesn’t go away. We pass,” she emphasizes. “I don’t struggle with that.”

Interesting, she says, she thinks, however, that “she ran around with 69 all year round”, everyone asked her about the milestone birthday and wanted to know what that is. “Actually, society is blocking things like aging.” On the one hand, nobody wants to age, but on the other hand nobody wants to die early.

Discovered as a teenager

Rosenberg is an integral part of the German music world. She was discovered in a youth competition, and as a teenager she landed her first hit with “Mister Paul McCartney” 55 years ago. Songs like “Marleen”, “I am like you” or “Love can hurt” followed in the 1970s.

The catchy discobeats made them one of the most famous pop singers in Germany. But even if this time ran very successfully for Rosenberg: In interviews, the daughter of Auschwitz-surviving Otto Rosenberg, a long-time board member of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, emphasizes that she was determined at the beginning of her career.

Rosenberg considers stars like Shirin David to be “power women”

“I couldn’t get involved, I didn’t invent anything right up to the clothing,” she says in retrospect of the dpa. It all did the record company. In the meantime, the new generations have swimmed much more. “There are stars like Shirin David in the hip-hop area. These are power women and they are set up very differently.”

In any case, in the 80s she wanted to get out of these record contracts, says Rosenberg in a video on Instagram. There she currently takes her followers on a journey through time through her life, for example posting old title editions of the “Bravo” on the cover with her face.

“I didn’t want to be this girl anymore, which smiled so kind from the poster walls,” she says in the video. Since then she has experimented a lot – with rock, chanson, jazz, techno, punk and pop. She and her son Max produced her album for the 50th anniversary of the stage, and in 2020 it landed in 1st place on the German charts.

“He belongs to me” hit “Nagel on the head” back then

Her current album “Bunter Planet” also sounds pop. On March 14th, shortly after her birthday, an anniversary edition of the record – including with a ballad version of “He belongs to me” in a duet with ESC star Conchita Wurst, will be released. Last but not least, this hit from the 70s is a hymn for social emancipation for many gays and lesbian people.

“At that time it was anything but accepted, and it was such a mega hit that all men could sing what they felt without they had to come without being afraid,” said Conchita Wurst in the Vox program “Sing my hit” to Rosenberg.

That gave Rosenberg of the German -language queer community. Forever, she was grateful for her, according to the singer and drag artist, behind which the entertainer Tom Neuwirth is.

The song written by men originally came out in April 1975 and with its memorable lines like “He belongs to me, like my name on the door”, cult status. At the time, she did not think of a man, says Rosenberg, but about songs by the American disco singer Gloria Gaynor (“I will survive”).

So songs with a high pace that lure you onto the dance floor. “I wanted to make music like Gloria Gaynor, Diana Ross and The Three Degrees, I had posters on my wall. The young composers therefore hit my head at the time,” says the artist.

On tour again in November

The song has long been part of the repertoire at its concerts. In November, Rosenberg goes on club tour with “Bunter Planet”. “Well, what can I say? Rod Stewart has just turned 80 and goes on tour. So then I say: Now more than now.”