This song has a soft spot in my heart. My first love/fiancee was half German and used to sing this song in German all the time. She's now dying from vax induced turbocancer at 53.

How funny, because of the balloon debacle, I looked up this song yesterday and I too found the lyrics to be a lot more interesting than I remembered. I went with the goldfinger cover rather than the original by Nina I believe.

Full Lyrics:

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, sparks 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 The 99 red balloons go by

99 Decision Street 99 ministers meet To worry, worry, super scurry 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 superhero Everyone's a Captain Kirk With orders to identify To clarify and classify Scrambling the summer sky 99 red balloons go by

As 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

What is the moral of the song?

Often we try to do something as a gesture of good will and it is interpreted as a declaration of war. People are so conditioned to assume "those ones over the wall" are trying to destroy them that they will look for any provocation to justify their blind hatred.

As a result, the world will torch itself before considering that the intent of 99 red balloons going by was just meant to lift people's spirits up, if only for a moment.

(This song is mostly written with the context of the Berlin Wall and the tensions of the Cold War).

Any relation to [CLAS 1-99] we find in posts?

Nena is Q

operation fu-go (Japanese balloon bombs that bombed continental U.S. during ww2)

Luft does not mean red, which it is in the original.

I always thought it did as a kid when the song came out.

Wonder why the change.

"President" is mentioned in the lyric. How often does that happen?

This is sending me chills.

Yeah sorry, But it's "neinundneinzig Luftballons" which literally translates to 99 hot-air balloons. There's no red mentioned, ever