99 Luftballons

Template:Single infobox2 "99 Luftballons" is a Cold War-era protest song by the German band Nena. Originally sung in German, it was later re-recorded in English as "99 Red Balloons". It is one of the most successful pop songs by a German artist in the world.

"99 Luftballons" reached #1 in West Germany in 1983. In 1984, the original German version also peaked at #2 on the American Billboard Hot 100 chart and the English language version topped the UK Singles Chart.

History of the song

While at a Rolling Stones concert, Carlo Karges, the guitar player of Nena's band, 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. 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 force. 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" (on an envelope, which he alleges he still has), which has a more satirical tone than the original. The English version is not a direct translation of the German but contains a somewhat different set of lyrics.

The song came during a period of escalating rhetoric and strategic maneuvering between the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. In particular, its international chart success followed the United States deployment of Pershing II missiles in West Germany in January 1984, which prompted protests across western Europe. The following month, Nena topped the UK Singles Chart with "99 Red Balloons" for three weeks, starting in 28 February, 1984. Unusually, 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. "99 Luftballons" became the first German-language record to reach the top ten on the US charts since "Sailor (Your Home Is the Sea)" by Lolita in 1961. Although the German version was the hit version in America, both the German and English versions receive radio airplay in the United States today.

Nena never had another hit single outside of Continental Europe, and therefore, is considered to be a very successful one-hit wonder artist in both the US and the UK. Channel 4 placed "99 Red Balloons" 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. VH1 also put it at #73 of the 100 greatest songs of the 80's.

Curiously enough, another German language song topped the American charts in 1986 - Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus".

Cover versions

The song has been covered by numerous bands, including 7 Seconds, Five Iron Frenzy, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, AFI (band), Siobhan DuVall, Reel Big Fish, NOFX, Angry Salad, and The Jetpack Escapee Scene. In German it was covered by Beat Crusaders and by Goldfinger in English with a German verse. The German verse in the song is actually the next to last verse in the original German version, and it replaces the next to last verse in the English version (a humorous one involving Captain Kirk). However, in Polyphony Digital's "Gran Turismo 3" the song is sung in full English, including the Captain Kirk verse. The latter cover was featured in several films, including Not Another Teen Movie (2001) and Eurotrip (2004) 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. Draco and the Malfoys, on their self-titled debut album, cover the song, renamed 99 Death Eaters, with rewritten lyrics to suit wizard rock.

Ellen ten Damme has included part of the song in her cover of Sag mir wo die Blumen sind, the German translation of Pete Seeger's Where have all the flowers gone.

More popular covers of this song include John Forté's Ninety Nine (Flash The Message) on his 1998 Poly Sci album and one by Reel Big Fish in 2006.

Special D used a sample of this song on his song "Here I Am".

In the mid-nineties a rave version of this song was produced by the group Airbag. This version appears on a rave collection album called "Mega Rave Party 2" from 1995, that was published by the Israeli music company NMC.

Pop-punk band Green Day covered the song briefly in a concert on an unknown date in 2001.

Facts and figures

• The original title literally translates as "Ninety-Nine Balloons". The colour red was simply added to make the English lyric scan, but many have assumed that it referred to the perceived Communist threat, despite the fact that it does not appear in the original lyric. For more on the link between the color red and politics, see red.

• 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 for an entire hour. The station broadcasted the videos as requested from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST on March 26 2006.