Nena - 99 Red Balloons

It’s an unmistakable opening: a spacey synth lifts before a woman’s voice sets the stage. For German new wave band Nena, ’99 Luftballons’ quickly became their signature song. Written by band members Carlo Karges and Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, the song was originally inspired by Karges watching balloons get released at the end of a 1982 Rolling Stones concert in West Berlin. Karges wondered if the balloons would alert the ever-vigilant troops stationed at the top of the Berlin Wall on the east of the German capital. With that, the idea of an innocent balloon being the spark of a Cold War crisis was born. The original version of the song, ’99 Luftballons’, was recorded in Nena’s native German language. After the track became a hit single throughout continental Europe and Japan, Nena were persuaded to record an English-language version of ’99 Luftballons’ for release as a single in the United Kingdom. The English lyrics were written by Kevin McAlea, who chose not to directly translate the German lyrics. Instead, he took the story and message from the original song and made an English-language reinterpretation of it. Since it would have been ’99 Air Balloons’ if the song had been translated directly, McAlea made a slight alteration to make it ’99 Red Balloons’. The mix between both versions of the song became increasingly blurred as the years went on. 1980s compilations and radio stations often flip between using one or the other. Tastes vary, but both ’99 Luftballons’ and ’99 Red Balloons’ have become Nena’s collective calling cards for almost four decades.

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