99 red balloons

History of the song

While at a Rolling Stones concert, Carlos Karges, the guitar player of Nena's band, noticed that balloons were being released. As he watched them move torwards the horizon, he noticed them shifting and changing shapes, where they looked nothing like a mass of balloons but some strange spacecraft. After thinking this, he wrote "99 Luftballons".

Both the English and German versions of the song tell a story of ninety-nine balloons floating into the air, triggering an apocalyptic overreaction by the military. The music was composed by Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, the keyboardist of Nena's band, while Karges, wrote the original German lyrics. Kevin McAlea wrote the English version, titled "99 Red Balloons," which has a more satirical tone than the original.

The song came during a period of escalating rhetoric and strategic maneuvering between the United States and the Soviet Union. In particular, its international chart success followed two events in Europe that raised fears of the Cold War becoming hot. First, in November 1983 the Soviet Union misread NATO's annual Able Archer exercise as an actual preparation for a nuclear strike and activated its own weapons for a preemptive strike. Although few outside the Soviet Union understood the seriousness of the response, historians now consider it one of the closest calls with nuclear war and a reflection of the war angst of the time. A few weeks later, in January 1984, the United States deployed Pershing II missiles in West Germany, prompting protests across western Europe.

In this context, Nena topped the UK Singles Chart with "99 Red Balloons" for three weeks, starting in 28 February 1984. Strangely enough, in the United States the German version was more successful, charting at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. On March 26, 1984, it was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, for shipment of over 500,000 copies.

Nena never had another hit single, and therefore, is considered to be a very succesful one-hit wonder artist in both countries. Channel 4 placed "99 Red Baloons" at #2 in their countdown of the 50 Greatest One Hit Wonders, while VH1 placed it at #10 in their list of the 100 Greatest One-hit Wonders.

Curiously enough, another German language song topped the American charts on the 1980s; Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus".

Cover versions

The song has been covered by numerous bands, most notably by 7 Seconds in English, Siobhan DuVall, NOFX and by Goldfinger in English with a German verse. The German verse in the song is actually just the German version of the English verse which immediately preceedes it. In essence, an entire verse (a humorous one involving Captain Kirk) is cut out and is sung in neither English nor German. The latter cover was featured in several films, including Eurotrip (2004) and Not Another Teen Movie (2001) as well as during various competitions in Nickelodeon's television movie "Rocket Power: Race Across New Zealand" (2002). Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine have also covered the song on their I'd Like a Virgin 2004 album; this version actually contains gibberish lyrics sung in a pseudo-German accent in lieu of German lyrics.

Another popular cover of this song is John Forté's Ninety Nine (Flash The Message) on his 1998 Poly Sci album.

Trivia

• "99 Luftballons" was also used in a Telus commercial in Canada in 2003. This commercial featured piglets being lifted up by red balloons into the air, with the German version of the song playing in the background.

• VH1 Classic, an American cable television station, ran a charity event for Hurricane Katrina relief in 2006. Viewers who made donations were allowed to choose which music videos the station would play. One viewer donated $35,000 for the right to program an entire hour and requested continuous play of Nena's "99 Luftballons" and "99 Red Balloons" videos continuously for an entire hour. The station broadcasted the videos as requested from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST on March 26, 2006.

• In a spoof of American Idol on an episode of the eighth season of MADtv, parodies of Courtney Love, Wham!, and Bobby Brown, who are portrayed as washed-up celebrities, had to sing a song that "was from Germany and had a number, a color and something that floats in the title" with the prize being the privilege of getting a new recording contract to fix their fallen careers.

Mentions in the media

• A cover version is featured in the European release of the 2004 video game Donkey Konga.
• On the VH1 one-hit wonders special mentioned above, host William Shatner joked that this was the only song on the countdown to mention him. He was referencing the line "Hielten sich für Kaptain Kirk." ("They thought that they were Captain Kirk.")
• Played in the 2003 French movie La Beuze.
• Played in the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
• Sang for a few seconds by Drew Barrymore in the 1998 movie The Wedding Singer.
• Played in the pilot episode of NBC's television series My Name is Earl.
• It has been featured in a Saturday Night Live commercial spoof, advertising a smoke detector that plays the hits of the 1980s.
• Played twice in "My Interpretation", the 44th episode of the American sitcom Scrubs. Both times, JD daydreams that dancing around in a room full of red balloons while this song is playing could diffuse a tense situation.
• Played in one of the climactic scenes of Boogie Nights.
• Features in the reunion dance scenes of Grosse Pointe Blank.
• Features as the closing theme for the BBC Radio 4 spoof panel game The 99p Challenge
• Sung by Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in the movie Wedding Crashers as a deleted scene.
• Played on the Australian countdown programme 20 to 1 on 13 February 2006, in the episode "20 to 1: One Hit Wonders".
• P. Diddy claims this to be one of his favorite songs.
• Briefly quoted in the Guster song "Amsterdam"
• Homer sings the German version of the song to get tips from German students in The Simpsons episode "The Heartbroke Kid". video
• Listened by the character of Lorelai (Gilmore Girls) when she goes into labor.
• Is included in "Weird Al" Yankovic's polka medley "Hooked On Polkas", on his album Dare to Be Stupid.

See Also

• Norwegian rocket incident

External links

• German and English Lyrics, commentary on the song, plus interview with the song's writer
• A triple side-by-side comparison of the German lyrics, a direct translation, and the English version
• List of bands who have covered this song
• 20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Accidental Nuclear War
• Parody Video found on Youtube