Song of the Day 8/13: Nena, “99 Luftballons”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

A lot of sabers are rattling these days, except nobody uses sabers anymore. The threat from Russia in the Ukraine and maybe China in the Pacific is all about the nukes.

It’s a familiar situation, and bands in the ‘80s were really feeling it. Detente with the Soviet Union was not holding and both sides were building up their nuclear arsenals. It was a time of Reagan, Kissinger and Thatcher. And ‘80s music tended to kind of dark anyway. Even the dance music.

MTV favorite “99 Luftballons” by German band Nena might sound like a sweet tune about lovers in the park. It was hard to tell since the lyrics were in German (the English translation didn’t get much play over here). But it turned out those “air balloons” accidentally float across an enemy border, are mistaken for bombs and start a nuclear war.

The guitarist who wrote the lyrics had seen a balloon release in West Germany when one of them floated east over the Berlin Wall. A song idea was born.

But it would be worth the attention just to just hear the fetching Gabriele Susanne Kerner pronounce “99 Luftballons.” A listener might be eager to get past the instrumental breaks and go back to her.

The video, with subtitles:

If “99 Luftbalons” isn’t about what you thought it was about, that might also go for “Enola Gay” by British synth-rockers Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Sure, the Enola Gay dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Sure, there’s a reference to “Little Boy,” the name they gave to it. (Fun but bizarre fact: the Enola Gay was named after the pilot’s mother.) There are some anti-war sentiments, but take a good look at the lyrics and you might see see why it also served as a gay anthem. It later became the theme song for a British soccer team, with altered lyrics.

Here’s OMD with singer Andy McCluskey in all his dorky glory. Maybe he was being ironic.