99 luftballons what is it about

He thought about what might happen if they floated over the Berlin Wall to the Soviet sector. Also cited by the band was a newspaper article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal about five local high school students who in played a prank to simulate a UFO by launching 99 one was lost from the original aluminized Mylar balloons attached with ribbons to a traffic flare. The red flame from the flare reflected by the balloons gave the appearance of a large pulsating red object floating over Red Rock Canyon outside the Las Vegas valley.

Neunundneunzig 99 has one syllable more than "ninety-nine", so the last syllable and "Luft" are blended in the English translation and become "red". The lyrics of the original German version tell a story: 99 balloons are mistaken for UFOs, causing a General to send pilots to investigate. Finding nothing but children's balloons, the pilots decide to put on a show and shoot them down. The display of force worries the nations along the borders and the Defence ministers on each side bang the drums of conflict to grab power for themselves.

In the end, a year war results from the otherwise harmless flight of balloons, causing devastation on all sides without a victor. At the end, the singer walks through the devastated ruins and lets loose a balloon, watching it fly away.

In , the English version was 99 Red Balloons was released. On 1 February, , a user by the "pattyttaf1" uploaded the English version of 99 Red Balloons with the same music video as the German one. On October 9th, , a user by the name of "dicka" uploaded Nena's performance of 99 Red Balloons which was broadcasted on the British Television Programme Top of the Pops. From the outset Nena and other members of the band expressed disapproval for the English version of the song, "99 Red Balloons".

In March , the band's keyboardist and song co-writer Uwe Fahrenkrog Petersen said, "We made a mistake there. The display of force worries the nations along the borders and the war ministers on each side bang the drums of conflict to grab power for themselves. In the end, a year war results from the otherwise harmless flight of balloons, causing devastation on all sides without a victor.

At the end, the singer walks through the devastated ruins and lets loose a balloon, watching it fly away. The promotional video was shot in a Dutch military training camp, the band performing the song on a stage in front of a backdrop of fires and explosions provided by the Dutch army. Towards the end of the video, the band are seen taking cover and abandoning the stage which was unplanned and genuine since they believed the explosive blasts were getting out of control.

The English version retains the spirit of the original narrative, but many of the lyrics are translated poetically rather than directly translated: red helium balloons are casually released by an anonymous civilian into the sky and are registered as missiles by a faulty early warning system ; the balloons are mistaken for military aircraft which results in panic and eventually nuclear war.

From the outset Nena and other members of the band expressed disapproval for the English version of the song, "99 Red Balloons". In March , the band's keyboardist and song co-writer Uwe Fahrenkrog Petersen said, "We made a mistake there. I think the song loses something in translation and even sounds silly. There have been two re-recordings of the original German version of the song which have been released by Nena: a modern version in which was included on Nena feat. Nena [10] and a retro version in , [11] which included some verses in French.

Live recordings of the song are included on all six of Nena's live albums, dating from to American and Australian audiences preferred the original German version, which became a very successful non-English language song, topping charts in both countries, reaching no. VH1 Classic , an American cable television station, ran a charity event for Hurricane Katrina relief in Viewers who made donations were allowed to choose which music videos the station would play.

The station broadcast the videos as requested from to pm EST on 26 March In his book Music: What Happened? Nonetheless, he cautioned: "It must be admitted that this song suffers from an embarrassingly out-of-place disco funk interlude, and the word kriegsminister. Their version also appears on their self-titled album. A cover of the song was recorded by the band Goldfinger in for the album Stomping Ground and gained popularity after featuring in the film EuroTrip.

South African band Southern Gypsey Queen released a cover of the song in Japanese pop singer Yoko Oginome released a cover of the song for the album Dear Pop Singer released on 20 August Parody songwriter Tim Cavanagh recorded a parody of the song, "99 Dead Baboons," which debuted on the Dr.

Demento radio show shortly after Nena released the original song; it turned into a popular request on the Funny Five. Festival in Germany. Template:Nena band Template:Nena. Culture Wikia Explore.

Wiki Content. Duke Ellington DJ Shadow!!! Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? History Talk 0. Stanislav Petrov , a Soviet early-warning system operator who in disregarded a false nuclear attack alarm from shining clouds, rather than balloons and may have prevented a nuclear war.

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Retrieved 17 July Retrieved 2 June In The 80s. Retrieved 29 October Nena — Geschichte einer Band. ISBN Record Mirror. For more than two decades, the thought of being reduced to cinders by an atomic bomb hit home for two generations of rock stars -- perhaps because it could hit their home.

The first signs of atomic anxiety in pop surfaced, of course, in the early '60s; the same '50s children who had grown up with bomb-shelter drills were now folk-rock singer-songwriters.

His peer Phil Ochs, who frequently gleaned song topics from newspaper headlines, chronicled the sinking of a nuclear submarine in "The Thresher" Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction," a heavy-on-the-cheese slice of cash-in apocalypse, made it to No. Whether the cause was protest-song burnout or the political apathy of the era, Cold War rock lay low in the '70s. The few atomic songs that crept out, like Jackson Browne's elegiac hymn "Before the Deluge" , used elliptical imagery far removed from the direct-hit finger-pointing of Browne's '60s predecessors.

It wasn't until the last months of the decade, when news bulletins broadcast reports of an accident at Three Mile Island in the spring of , that rock 'n' roll again woke up.