Soundtrack Staples: Nena's '99 Luftballons'
Amy Flower
STACK Senior Editor
Some songs are used frequently in movies to set the mood, and these are what we like to call 'Soundtrack Staples'. Nena's ‘99 Luftballons’ - AKA ‘99 Red Balloons’ - was a slice of perfect pop with a message...
Mind you, most English speakers missed the specifics of the 1983 track’s strong anti-war tale as the German version was the one that was the big hit, even though you only had to flip the single over to get the English version. Then, even if you made that Herculean effort, the lyrics there took many liberties in translation - going beyond the need to allow for those pesky extra German syllables to introduce colour to the Anglicised balloons.
It was proof that it didn't really matter what you sang as long as it was catchy, plus there was a certain exoticness to words like "schlauerlloyd" (erm, actually it’s "schlaue leute", or "intelligent people" - irony noted), and we were forever left wondering just why Fritz was so eager. This seemingly also distracted us from the fact that the song didn't even really have a chorus. Genius!
The band themselves have admitted that they regretted releasing the English version, so they'd likely love us Aussies (and the Kiwis, Americans, Japanese, Germans, Austrians, Belgians, Dutch, Swedish, and Swiss) for taking the German version to our hearts - and the very top of our charts. Those in the UK, Canada and Ireland instead took the English take to the tops of their charts.
When we researched movie soundtrack appearances of the song, we were actually surprised to only find 14 - and only a handful of them the English version.
Anyway, here's the video - the German mix, of course – which was shot in a Dutch military training camp, with artillery from Dutch army helpers who were so enthusiastic that the part where the band duck for cover was from genuine fear that the explosions had gotten out of hand.
Oh, and we’ve also included a fun deleted scene from Wedding Crashers. Dive further down the page for a list of those 14 movies (at last count) that 99 Luftballons/99 Red Balloons has appeared in…
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
Boogie Nights (1997)
The Wedding Singer (1998)
My Best Friend's Girl (2008)
Watchmen (2009)
Mr Nobody (2009)
Hell (2011)
Filth (2013)
Atomic Blonde (2017)
Bingo: The King of the Mornings (2017)
Despicable Me 3 (2017)
Sunday's Illness (2018)
Little White Lies 2 (2019)
My Spy (2020)
Floating in the summer sky, 99 red balloons go buy!
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