Flashback Friday: Nena – 99 Red Balloons
The original title, “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”.
So what inspired this song? 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.
