The best German songs of all time: Nena – “99 Luftballons”

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If the USA and the Soviet Union had started a nuclear war in the 1980s, Germany would probably have been the first to be pulverized. Released in 1983, the peace song played on the paranoia of the military powers: Balloons are mistaken for unknown flying objects and trigger the nuclear attack.

In 1983, the NDW song with diary poetry made Nena, who had only been discovered a year earlier by members of the group Spliff, the biggest German singer – and that worldwide: The song also reached the top of the charts in England. The English-language version climbed to second place in the USA in 1984, higher than any other German production since then.

Nena is now “cult”

It must have been due to the carefree nature of the 23-year-old, to the hope, the dove of peace, but also to the security in her voice, that the music buyers in the Allied countries were convinced that the Germans were no longer in wanted to go to war and had a right to their own attitude.

Nena on stage in 1983

However, Nena could not repeat her success with “99 Luftballons”. The comeback in 2002 took place under the motto “20 years Nena feat. Nena” and put more emphasis on her role as a former figurehead of the Neue Deutsche Welle and eighties music. Your current pieces are only hits. Nena is now just “cult”.

Her role as a woman in German pop music is undisputed: although she did not write her own songs, she was spokesman for the band named after her. Born in Hagen, she became a role model for many girls who wanted to escape the West German stuffiness of the Kohl years and do whatever they liked. Body styling as an expression of emancipation: After seeing Nena on television, the western allies thought that all German women wore armpit hair.

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