That's well done.

Post #444,927 by Another Scott 10/22/24 7:35:27 PM 10/22/24 7:35:27 PM Reply	That's well done. Thanks for the pointer. crazy - I always took it as an anti-nukes song. Remember it came out in 1983 - the time of the INF negotiations and back-and-forth and protests in Europe. DW.com - 40 years since 99 luftballoons: [...] Their debut album "Nena," released on January 14, 1983, had included Nena's first hit "Nur geträumt" (Only dreamt) as well as the seemingly naive "99 Luftballons." However, it quickly became clear in the latter song that Nena was addressing, in her own language and in the language of youth, the warmongers who were keeping the world in suspense at the time: the Soviet Union and the USA. Armed to the teeth with nuclear missiles, the two world powers had not only threatened each other, but could destroy the world with their deadly arsenals. [ Picture of the German band Nena on stage, with four musicians dressed in 80s clothes surrounding the singer singing into a microphone. ] All because of 99 balloons Most people's greatest fear during this highly explosive time in history was that someone might accidentally press the red button and trigger nuclear annihilation. This is exactly what Nena describes in "99 Luftballons" — known in English as "99 Red Balloons." The song imagines a situation where (99 red) balloons show up on both countries' radars as unidentified objects and both sides scramble planes and go on full alert to counteract a perceived nuclear attack. The situation escalates, all countries get involved, everyone wants war and power — and in the end there is nothing left. [...] FWIW. Kate Bush's "Breathing" (5:34) from 1980 had a similar feel, but it's much more explicit in telling the story. Cheers, Scott.
Post #444,930 by drook 10/22/24 8:08:09 PM 10/22/24 8:08:09 PM Reply	Hmm, not how I understood it Is this interpretation that it was literally balloons showing up on radar, and that triggered the (over)reaction? I always understood that balloons was a metaphor for the missiles going overhead. -- Drew
Post #444,977 by scoenye 10/30/24 8:15:10 PM 10/30/24 8:15:10 PM Reply	Zeitgeist 99 Luftballons came out in January 1983. Ronnie Raygun was getting ever more aggressive (SDI was announced in March,) and in September, KAL 007 was shot down by the Soviets, killing all aboard. I'm not saying Nena had a palantír that allowed them to see the future, but the fear that something stupid would set off the conflagration was real and not limited to the tin foil hatters.
Post #444,978 by pwhysall 10/31/24 2:34:26 AM 10/31/24 2:34:26 AM Reply	1983 was also the year of Able Archer
Post #444,979 by CRConrad 10/31/24 4:23:51 AM 10/31/24 4:23:51 AM Reply	Nah, always been quite literal balloons. Balloons that set off the whole thing, trigger the missiles It's even more explicit in the English lyrics: the very first few lines are about buying the balloons and setting them free to fly. None of that is explicitly mentioned in the original German, but the balloons are consistently talked about as concretely existing objects -- if they weren't, what was there to be taken for UFOs? -- so AFAICT the literal interpretation has always been the way pretty much everyone has interpreted it. The ballons are WHY the missiles are flying overhead, but in the beginning, there were actual balloons. Side note: They come in "a bag", so there must be a phase of blowing them up in between, but that's not mentioned. And since they're flying, they can't be literal "Luftballons" (Luft = air), but must be helium-filled. That's a bigger operation, though, which would takes away some of the song's intended spirit of casual spur-of-the-moment thing -- "We were just fooling around in a toy shop and letting fly a bunch of balloons at dawn" (weird time for a toy shop to be open, BTW) -- so no wonder it's never mentioned. Also, BTW: If the balloons were taken for "UFOs aus dem All" -- UFOs from space -- then why the fuck would the nations of Earth start shooting at each other over it? Come to think of it, I may already have questioned this way back forty years ago when the song first became popular; I was an SF fan and a stickler for accuracy even then. But hey, it's a pop song. The lyrics may not make perfect sense, but in that respect they're at least not much worse than most other pop song lyrics. -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi

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