99 Red Balloons

I had listen to this song many times before and each time I felt some kind of a strange feeling. There are many pieces of classical music that bring me goosebumps. But this was quite the unlikely kind, 80s pop music suitable for teenagers (at least from my point of view).

A couple of weeks back, while I was walking to the university, I heard this playing on a radio station. I felt the same thing again but could not follow the lyrics properly to grab the meaning as my mind was more focused on the traffic on the road. Nevertheless, I determined to check the lyrics out as soon as I could connect to the internet at uni.

Once I read through the lyrics the light flashed inside my head. What amazes me about this song is that the lyrics is so simple and the meaning is so straight forward. But within that simplicity it addresses a serious plight that has been unfolding through out the history. And we can find thousand and one similar incidents from the present as well, involving global and domestic politics.

This song was originally sung in German by Nena. Then the English version too was sung by the same artist. Check out the following lyrics and see if you get what I mean, or whether you find a different message encoded in it;

Text: Carlo Karges (English by Kevin McAlea)
Music: J. U. Fahrenkrog-Petersen

You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got
Set them free at the break of dawn
Til one by one, they were gone
Back at base bugs in the software
Flash the message, something's out there
Floating in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by

99 red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky as 99 red balloons go by

99 Decision street
99 ministers meet
To worry, worry, super flurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we've waited for
This is it boys, this is war
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by

99 knights of the air
Ride super high tech jet fighters
Everyone's a super hero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify
To clarify, and classify
Scramble in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by

99 dreams I have had
In every one a red balloon
It's all over and I'm standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you, and let it go