Destiny is the fourth regular studio album by all-female German pop group No Angels, released by Polydor Records and Universal Music Domestic on 13 April 2007 across German-speaking Europe. Conceived as a comeback project, the album marked the group's return following a hiatus announced in fall 2003, during which the members pursued individual solo careers. Production on Destiny was led primarily by the duo Twin, with additional contributions from Jiant, Arnthor Birgisson, Michel Zitron, Vincent Pontare, Max Martin, Adrian Newman, and Thorsten Brötzmann, among others. It is also the first album recorded by the group's third lineup, following original member Vanessa Petruo's decision not to return to the band.
Recorded over a comparatively brief period at Sound Studio N in Cologne, Destiny comprises a mixture of uptempo tracks and ballads that continue the stylistic direction established on the group's earlier albums, Now... Us! (2002) and Pure (2003). Musically, the album is rooted in pop, incorporating elements of pop rock alongside contemporary R&B and dance influences. Its lyrics explore themes such as friendship, committed relationships, and emotional challenges within romantic partnerships. Upon release, Destiny received generally mixed to negative reviews from critics, who frequently commended the group's vocal performances but criticized the material as formulaic and reliant on familiar pop conventions.
Commercially, Destiny failed to replicate the substantial success of the group's earlier releases. It became their first album not to reach the top position on the German Albums Chart, peaking instead at number four. It also attained positions of number 14 in Austria and number 22 in Switzerland, with sales totaling fewer than 30,000 copies in its first three months. The album produced five singles, including "Goodbye to Yesterday" and "Maybe", the ballad "Amaze Me", a cover of "Teardrops" and "Disappear," the group's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2008. The latter two tracks, previously unreleased in their original form, were included on a reissue titled Destiny Reloaded, released on 14 March 2008.
Background In September 2003, shortly after the release of their third album Pure, their first project without the involvement of original member Jessica Wahls, the remaining members of No Angels, Nadja Benaissa, Lucy Diakovska, Sandy Mölling, and Vanessa Petruo, announced their decision to cease group activities, citing sustained physical and emotional exhaustion following three years of intensive touring, recording, and promotional commitments. After the release of the compilation album The Best of No Angels (2003), the group formally disbanded, with its members subsequently pursuing individual careers across music, film, theatre, and television, achieving varying degrees of commercial success. Initially framed as a hiatus expected to last at least one year, the pause soon became indefinite.
In 2006, after revisiting live recordings from the group’s first two concert tours, Diakovska initiated discussions of a possible reunion by contacting her former bandmates individually. While Benaissa, Mölling, and Wahls responded positively to the proposal, Petruo declined to participate in further discussions regarding a permanent reunion, citing her commitments as an independent solo artist. though she later appeared in the two-part ProSieben documentary We Love No Angels (2007), where she expressed her support for the group's plans to reunite as a quartet. As Mölling was completing work on her second solo album Frame of Mind, both the formal announcement of the reunion and the recording of new material were postponed until 2007. In the interim, the four prospective members met with their former A&R, Nik Hafemann, and Holger Roost-Macias, the producer of the inaugural Popstars series in which the group had originally been formed to discuss their comeback strategy. However, owing to fundamental differences between Holger Roost-Macias's proposals and the group's vision for a reunion, the members unanimously declined further collaboration with him and, without his involvement, resolved to proceed independently while seeking to secure the rights to the No Angels name, then controlled by Cheyenne Records, an affiliate of his Tresor TV production company responsible for producing Popstars for the RTL II network.
Conception and production Following their split from Roost-Marcias and his management team, Benaissa, Diakovska, Mölling, and Wahls assumed responsibility for their own affairs. Hafemann remained closely involved in their musical activities and took on the role of executive producer for their as-yet-untitled forthcoming studio album. Around the turn of the year 2006/2007, the group signed a recording contract with the Domestic Pop division of Universal Music and met with several Scandinavian musicians in Stockholm where they were presented pre-existing songs for potential inclusion on their new projects. While each band member had written or pre-recorded demo songs for a new album, they eventually decided not to record self-written material as Benaissa, Diakovska, Mölling, and Wahls found themselves struggling to find a stylistic main thread within their own songs. Instead, the band focused on collecting and selecting adaptable songs with a "typical but contemporary No Angels sound", of which some were penned exclusively for the group by various songwriters from Sweden, England, and Australia.
Production was provided by a large group of Scandinavian producers, including Tobias Gustafsson, Michel Zitron, Ivar Lisinski, Vincent Pontare, and Arnthor Birgisson, as well as Ulf Lindström and Johan Ekhé from duo Ghost. In addition, the band reteamed with Thorsten Brötzmann and Joachim Persson and Niclas Molinder from duo Twin, all of which had contributed to earlier projects. Both Peter Ries and Leslie Mándoki, also frequent collaborators during the years 2001 to 2003, were not consulted. Recording began in January 2007 at the Sound Studio N in Cologne where the band spent ten days to record the first half of the album. All vocals were recorded simultaneously in two studios and control rooms to meet the deadline, with in-house studio engineers Nico Schütte and Tobias Eichelberg overseeing the process. Interrupted by several promotional appearances following the official announcement of their reunion the same month, recording sessions for the second half of the album took place in late February 2007.
Music and title Most songs on Destiny were contributed by Niclas Molinder and Joacim Persson from Swedish production team Twin, including the album's opening track and first single "Goodbye to Yesterday" which was an eleventh-hour addition to Destinys recording listing. The duo's other offerings on the album include guitar-driven uptempo song "Back Off", which critics compared to Destiny's Child's 2001 song "Survivor", as well as the album's second single "Maybe", a cover version of Norwegian singer Trine Rein's Melodi Grand Prix 2007 entry that is built around an uncredited sample of The Beatles' 1969 number-one record "Come Together". Twin, along with GrooveFactory, also co-produced "A Reason", a remake of the same-titled Dana Glover which has been described as a highbrow track, comprising a complex musical mixture by the likes of Tori Amos and Amanda Marshall. Steve Mac and Karen Poole contributed to "Amaze Me", a pulasting hymn-like pop ballad, while newcomer Adrian Newman produced the spheric mid-tempo ballad "What If". Another ballad, "The Rhythm of My Heart", saw the band reteaming with Thorsten Brötzmann, who had previously produced three number-one singles for them.
Tim Hawes and Pete Kirtley from British production duo Jiant provided co-production on the piano-led ballad "Make a Change", an English language cover of the 2003 song "Reste Encore", recorded by French girl band and fellow Popstars winners L5 and initially produced by Fred Fraikin. No Angels's favourite song on Destiny, it was one of the first songs assuredly to be included on the album alongside dark ballad "Misguided Heart", another Jiant contribution, and "I Don't Wanna Talk About It". Production on the latter was overseen by Ivar Lisinski and David Clewett who also worked on the song "Secret's Out" that mixes soft rock and contemporary R&B elements. The quartet also collaborated with Swedish production team Ghost on "I Believe in You", and Arnthor Birgisson and Max Martin on "I Had a Feeling", both being remakes of the same-titled songs on Swedish singer Agnes Carlsson's 2006 album Stronger. As reported, "I Had a Feeling" occupied the longest work until complementation. Uptempo dance track "Been Here Before" was written and produced by Itchycoo band members Tobias Gustafsson and Mia Bergström and features distorted vocals. With an instrumentation that includes a pounding bass beat, electronic chords, and drum machine sounds, it has been described as the most experimental as well as the sexiest record on the album.
Thirteen out of a total of sixteen tracks made it to the final track listing of the standard album, while "Ain't Gonna Look the Other Way" and "Secret's Out" served a B-sides and were later included on the reissue of Destiny. Musically, No Angels have described the album as "more of a continuation" of earlier projects instead of a musical reorientation in the course of the reunion. Therefore, they decided to include "powerful up-tempo songs, beat-driven tracks and empathic ballads" which they considered similar to their pre-disbandment releases. However, although incorporating elements of rock, soul and dance music, the songs are mainly affected by keyboards and string instruments. When asked about the album's lyrics and their tendency to post-break up issues, Benaissa commented: "I'd say, we're offering a broad range [of topics] with different directions [...] We just chose [the songs] for their statements, their energy and the feeling." Although the quartet had several titles for the album in mind at one time or another, including "platitudinous und boring names such as Comeback, Reunion, Chapter Four and New Beginning", the title of the longplayer was actually inspired by a demo recording for the album, named "Destiny Calls". The record failed to make the cut on the final track listing, but widely served as a metaphor for the band's "emotional relation" to the band.
Promotion While Mölling and Benaissa initially favored "Back Off" to be released as the first single from Destiny, No Angels and their label eventually settled on the Redfly-penned mid-tempo ballad "Goodbye to Yesterday" to lead the album. Their first release after a three years absence from the charts, it reached number four on the German Singles Chart, and peaked within the top 20 in Switzerland and the top 30 in Austria. On 6 April 2007, it was announced that either "I Believe in You", "Been Here Before", "Maybe", or "I Had a Feeling" would be the next single from Destiny and Universal Music started an online poll asking the fans to decide. "Maybe", a Trine Rein cover, eventually won over piano-laid "I Believe in You", and was released on 15 June 2007. The song failed to chart in Switzerland and debuted and peaked at number 36 in Germany, becoming the band's lowest-charting single there, selling less than 15,000 copies up to then.
In October 2007, a third single, consisting of the hymn-like ballad "Amaze Me" and a previously unreleased, synth-heavy cover of American duo Womack & Womack's 1988 song "Teardrops" was released. The double A-single for which the band filmed two music videos, debuted and peaked at number 25 in Germany.