99 Red Balloons

The song I chose to do my project on is the song 99 Red Balloons, by the artist Gabriel Kerner, also known as Nena. This was one of the songs in the '80s to make the point about how the war really affected the citizens and the countries themselves. The theme of this song is that overreacting right away is a bad thing. It can cause damage to you and to everything else around you. This song is representing the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union were caught up in the Cold War and it caused many problems. The example in this song is that, what if a child let go of a balloon and it went over the Berlin Wall to the Soviet’s side? Without deciding what it was, they blew up the whole country of Germany. This could have happened because of something so silly like a balloon. It also describes how unlucky the citizens of Germany are. They are in the middle of all of this. If something was thrown over the wall, or a balloon floated over it, their lives would have been ruined or they could have died because of it. The Soviet Union and the United States only thought about themselves. They were waiting for some kind of spark in the war so they would know when to fight.
The meaning of this whole song is that during the cold war, the Soviet Union and the United States were always at the brink of a nuclear war. This song explains a great story about what might have happened if something floated over the Berlin wall to the Soviet Union’s side. In this song, the balloons are mistaken by the Soviets as some unidentified object in the sky. Their military springs into action, creating a big, useless war that destroys their city. This was all because a bunch of balloons. The song ends on a hopeful note, when Nena sings the line "I’ve found one more balloon. I think of you and let it fly," that part shows that hope still remains, despite all that was lost. A lot of people believe that this was a song about protest, but in an interview with Nena, she explained that the song