"99 Luftballons" is a protest song by the German pop-rock band Nena. Originally sung in German, it was later re-recorded in English as "99 Red Balloons".
While at a June 1982 concert by the Rolling Stones in West Berlin, Nena's guitarist Carlo Karges noticed that balloons were being released. As he watched them move toward the horizon, he noticed them shifting and changing shapes, where they looked nothing like a mass of balloons but some strange spacecraft (referred to in the German lyrics as a "UFO"). He thought about what might happen if they floated over the Berlin Wall to the Soviet sector.
Both the English and German versions of the song tell a story of two children who buy a bag of red balloons in a toy shop in Cold War era Berlin and release them into the air at dawn, where they are spotted by the military who don't recognize them as balloons but instead think they are some kind of incoming weapon. They immediately put their troops on red alert and call out jet fighters to intercept which ultimately triggers a nuclear war between the two Cold War adversaries. In the apocalyptic aftermath, one of the children stands in the rubble of the city and finds a single remaining red balloon. Thinking of the other child, he or she then lets the balloon go. The music was composed by Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, the keyboardist of Nena's band, while Karges wrote the original German lyrics.
Having achieved widespread success in Germanic Europe and Japan, plans were made for the band to take the song international with an English version by Kevin McAlea, titled "99 Red Balloons". The English version is not a direct translation of the German and contains a somewhat different set of lyrics.
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. The station broadcast the videos as requested from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST on 26 March 2006.
The translation of the title is sometimes given as "Ninety-Nine Air Balloons", however "Ninety-Nine Balloons" is also correct. A Luftballon is a colourful toy balloon, rather than a balloon for transport or research. The name is derived from Luft, German for air, but the meaning of Luft does not qualify the type of balloon. The title "99 Red Balloons" almost scans correctly with the syllables falling in the right places within the rhythm of the first lines of lyrics, with "red" replacing "Luft"; the only difference is that neunundneunzig has one syllable more than ninety-nine. The 2002 re-release also features lyrics in French.
THE GERMAN VERSION:
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