# Understanding 99 Luftballons

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** 12tone
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgtpCJSnUbc
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/43916

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

in 1982, Germany was a nation divided. to the West, the Federal Republic of Germany, a member of the NATO alliance. to the East, the German Democratic Republic, a satellite state of the Soviet Union. and caught between them was the former capital of Berlin. Berlin was, in many ways, a microcosm of the entire Cold War: deep in the Eastern territories, the Berlin Wall had carved out a stronghold of Western influence, and the last 20 years had seen the two halves of the country settle into a fragile, uneasy peace. it was into that peace, and that tension, that the Rolling Stones came to perform in West Berlin. as an isolated island of liberalism in a sea of Soviet power, West Berlin didn't get many foreign bands, certainly not ones as important as the Stones, so this was a big deal. still, the show isn't remembered today for its music. no, it's remembered for a staging decision. near the end of the concert, the band released balloons. balloons that floated up into the night sky, high above the walled city. balloons that would probably be seen by the citizens of East Berlin. now, we don't know how most of the concert-goers felt about this. maybe they were inspired, maybe they were moved, or maybe they didn't care. but we know one person's reaction. his name was Carlo Karges, and for him, the balloons struck fear. he found himself wondering what would happen if they were seen not by civilians on the other side of the wall, but by the Soviet military. what if they didn't recognize them? what if they thought it was an attack? in the powder keg of the late Cold War, what would happen if this innocent gesture was misinterpreted? would there be time to avoid a catastrophic mistake? Karges wasn't sure, and that thought scared him so much that he had to find a way to express it. his dark fantasy inspired what would become a surprise international hit, which you might know as 99 Luftballons. let's take it apart. (tick, tick, tick, tock) before we get started, if you want to see my next video a month early or just watch this one ad-free, those are both live now on Patreon. there's a link in the description, more on that at the end of the video. one thing I love about synth-pop in general and this song in specific is the way they play around with soundscapes and genre conventions. 99 Luftballons doesn't have sections in the classic sense: there's no chorus, no bridge. but there are distinct regions, each with its own unique sound, style, and aesthetic. I count four, maybe five of these, most of which are just rearrangements of the same underlying musical ideas, so let's start our analysis with the one that isn't. (bang) the main riff, played by Jörn-Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, is the song's most memorable hook, and it's beautiful in its simplicity. melodically, it's all drawn from the pentatonic scale, and rhythmically it's got just enough syncopation to draw you in. but what makes it work so well is how it uses those simple elements. check it out. the four-bar riff can be divided into two halves, each of which starts the same way. (bang) this shared bar is about as simple as you can get, just alternating between the root, E, and the major 6th of the key, C#. it almost feels percussive to me, with the C#s falling on the backbeats as if they were snares, and in that context, the syncopation at the start makes a lot of sense. here, let's convert it to a drum beat. (bang) good enough. one of the most common ways to spice up this sort of basic rock beat is by syncopating the kick on beat 3, playing it an 8th note early, late, or most often, both. (bang) totally normal. what's not normal, and what makes this part of the riff pop, is that the pattern is rotated: instead of syncopating the second kick of the bar, he's syncopating the first. (bang) this avoids the downbeat entirely, which would be pretty hard to stabilize on the drums, but moving it back to the synth: (bang) there's just enough surrounding context that the intended downbeat is still clear. we hear the synth bouncing around the beat without breaking it. most of that context comes, of course, from the actual drums, played by Rolf Brendel. (bang) importantly, while the implied pulse of Fahrenkrog-Petersen's pseudo-drum beat is pretty fast, Brendel is playing in half-time. his snare aligns not with the C#s, but with the second E. I'm still gonna notate it in the faster tempo for reasons that'll hopefully become obvious later on, but this removes any ambiguity about which of the two Es is meant to be attached to the downbeat. if this one is sounding at the same time as a half-time snare, it must be beat 3. that's where those go. and while we're on Brendel, let's talk drum tone, because this is a great example of gated reverb. I talked about this in a lot of detail in my video on In The Air Tonight, the song that popularized the technique, but you can hear it everywhere in '80s drum production. in the classic version of gated reverb, you record the drums with a wide room mic, then treat it with hard compression and a noise gate. these two effects do opposite things: compression makes the quiet parts louder, and a gate go away. together, they create a drum tone that's drowning in the natural reverb of the room, but only when the drums are actually being played, giving you a sound that's massive but still crisp. but while that's how Phil Collins did it, later

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

productions often traded that acoustic approach for a more technological one: each drum head is recorded individually with a close mic, like normal, then run through a reverb processor before reaching a noise gate. this has a less live sound, because the artificial reverb doesn't capture the ambience of a real, physical space. but in exchange it gives you way more control. each drum can be treated separately. the various gates are opening and closing only when their specific drum is hit. and I think that's what's happening here. listening to it: (bang) you can here the massive shotgun pop of the snare, but only an 8th-note later, it's already gone. gated reverb. but back to the riff. this section builds energy with the classic synthpop thing of progressive layering: they start with a sparse, looping texture and add more instruments as it repeats. the first statements are really sparse, with the riff supported only by drums: (bang) and they're not even playing the whole thing. it's just the beginnings of the phrases, with full-bar rests in between to highlight that gorgeous drum tone. once the full riff comes in: (bang) it's immediately joined by a guitar cross-rhythm from Karges playing dotted quarter notes against the otherwise relatively straight pulse: (bang) and some new hi-hat accents to emphasize the syncopation that starts each phrase. (bang) the soundscape becomes more dense with the addition of new instruments, as does the metric space. the sparseness of the first part is transformed into something much more lively and full. but they also do something I see less often in these sorts of builds: creating energy with register. in the first part, the synth is set in a low octave: (bang) and it's joined by a bass double from Jürgen Dehmel for even more low-frequency punch. once the band comes in, though, Dehmel practically drops out, coming back only for the occasional accent, and Fahrenkrog-Petersen jumps up an octave to claim a more prominent, melodic spot in the mix. (bang) and they even repeat the trick: after two more statements, he jumps up another octave. (bang) I'm actually not hearing any new instruments here, beyond some subtle stabs in the background that sound to me like synth horns. all the energetic lift comes from that one change in register. it's really cool. as for the riff itself, instead of going through it note by note, I'd like to take a step back and look at it holistically. now that we have all the parts, what is the idea of this riff? and the first thing to mention is that it's entirely pentatonic. every note he plays is taken straight from the E major pentatonic scale, which is basically a melodic cheat code: there's no tension between any of them, so you can string them together in whatever order you want and it'll always sound good. maybe not exciting or particularly expressive, but those things don't have to come from note choices. and laying that pentatonic groundwork now is gonna pay dividends later on, so keep this in mind. but since all the notes just kind of work, the impact of the riff has to come from somewhere else. and I think there's two main factors here: rhythm and contour. both of them rely on that repeated pattern we observed earlier. rhythmically, we saw the first and third bars establish a sort of percussive boots-and-cats figure, with a little syncopation around the downbeat. in contrast, the other two bars use a very different rhythmic structure. they're actually slightly different from each other, too, but not by much, so I'm just gonna look at this one: (bang) and we can all agree to pretend they both do that. it's close enough. point is, while the first bar skips the downbeat, then falls into a basic quarter note pulse, the second bar hits the downbeat, then syncopates around the remaining beats. there's no attack on beats 2 or 3, and while he does hit beat 4, he immediately bounces off it, anticipating the start of the next phrase. interestingly, the note he plays on beat 4 is always C#, which I was comparing to a backbeat snare earlier, and it's the only C# he plays in either bar, so he's kinda carrying that metaphor through. I'm not sure that means much, but I think it's neat. more importantly, though, this rhythmic inversion, hitting the parts the first bar missed while skipping the ones it hit, gives the overall rhythm a really satisfying shape, never staying in one place long enough to get repetitive. and the contour is doing a similar thing. the repeated bars sit in a very narrow range, just bouncing between E and C#. this provides our anchor, our melodic home base. from there, the second bar moves up, flirting with the notes directly above E in the scale: (bang) and the fourth bar moves down, landing just below C#. (bang) the whole riff has this slow, undulating pattern, rising, falling, and always working its way back home. these

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

excursions aren't huge, either: the whole thing takes place in a range of less than an octave, so every time the register changes, he's playing a completely new set of notes. it's a subtle shape, moving just enough to feel like it's moving but never straying far from that comfortable center. that's the riff, which happens twice, but the rest of the song is just different takes on the same verse pattern, starting with a ballad. (bang) I don't want to talk much about the chords or the melody here, because they'll make more sense later, but I do want to talk about the synth envelope. this is basically the volume curve, and it tends to look something like this. when you press a key, the note swells up to a peak, drops down to some steady level, then when you let go, it fades out. besides the waveform, the envelope is probably the most important part of how a synth tone sounds, and here, it's very soft. it's got a long attack, and the sustain volume sounds close to the initial peak, so you never really hear the note begin. you just slowly become aware of it. combine that with Fahrenkrog-Petersen's rolled arpeggios, where instead of playing all the notes at once he staggers them slightly: (bang) and you get these chord voicings that seem to rise up from the aether, then dissolve away. in fact, listening to them with the vocals: (bang) he sounds late. the chords are played in sync with Nena Kerner's rubato phrasing, but by the time they match her volume, she's already a couple notes in. it's a really lovely, dreamlike atmosphere that perfectly underscores the lyrics: she's asking if you have time for a story, painting what follows as almost like a nursery rhyme, or maybe a parable. this is something to learn from. but while that's how the song starts, it quickly transitions to the riff, then exits to a very different soundscape. (bang) and now I can talk about the chords because here, we see them in their natural habitat. they're not really chords at all. not quite, anyway. instead, they're what I like to call the punk tetrad, basically four power chords, with two pairs of whole steps a perfect 4th apart. (bang) this is the foundation of thousands of punk riffs: super-fast tempos and rigid power chord shapes force punk guitarists to be extremely economical with their motions, so their riffs tend to rely on notes and intervals that are physically close on the neck of a guitar. the tetrad is four chords that are all as close as possible while still sounding good and interesting together, so you can jump around between them in any order while barely moving your hand. it's kinda like the pentatonic scale but for punk riffs. 99 Luftballons isn't a punk song, per se, but the Neue Deutsche Welle movement that Nena was a part of grew out of German post-punk. using the tetrad here is a way of paying tribute to that lineage, capturing the raw, frantic energy of the story. which, like, we haven't talked much about the story yet, have we? I should probably do that. like I said at the beginning, the song was inspired by Karges wondering how the Soviets would react to balloons floating over the Berlin Wall. and he takes that premise to its most apocalyptic conclusion. initially, the military thinks they might be UFOs, so they send fighter jets to investigate. that draws the attention of other nations, who misread it as a potential attack. the leaders of those nations see a chance to seize power by stoking fear, which snowballs into a third World War and, eventually, global ruin. all because of some balloons. while the details may seem implausible, the story speaks to the anxiety of the era, especially in West Berlin, a lone island of western liberalism and a key pawn in the Cold War whose freedom from Soviet rule had been tenuous for decades. the whole city lived in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, and 99 Luftballons helps put words to what that must have felt like. it's no wonder they reached for the musical vocabulary of punk to express themselves. anyway, let's talk melody. throughout the song, the vocal melody mostly relies on the same four-bar shape, which we can again divide into two halves, this time as a sort of call and response. in the first half, she sticks carefully to the pentatonic scale: (bang) but without really emphasizing the root. she sings E a couple times, but usually in passing, and not in strong metric positions. on the other hand, the second half: (bang) is very aggressively not pentatonic, starting with a sudden leap to a repeated A for a load of unprepared tension, but then it does release that tension by resolving to E at the end. the riff has already primed us to listen for pentatonic melodies, so this structure feels like a rollercoaster: we start off comfortable but slightly off-balance, rocket up into some very unexpected dissonance, and then settle back down. and then it happens again. and again. I'm hesitant to read too deep into this 'cause it's kinda just how melodies work, at least in

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

pop songs, but in this particular context I do think it captures some of that Cold War stress as well. with the constant brinksmanship of world leaders, full of arms races and proxy wars, there was always a sense that the next conflict might be the one that goes too far. is that going on in this melody too? I'm gonna say yes. mostly 'cause I think it's cool, but also because sometimes, she does mix it up, replacing that A figure in the second half with this. (bang) here, she keeps her range lower and sticks to the pentatonic scale, so we do get some strong, prominent Es. but without the tension of the A, there's nothing to resolve, so the line ends by stepping away from the root and up to F#. in these moments of relative calm, we see uncertainty creep its way back in. again, I'm always hesitant to assign too much meaning to relatively normal choices, but I think this melody demonstrates that even those normal choices can take on new meanings if the context is right. and speaking of context, these verses also have a really interesting lyrical flourish. it's tough for me to analyze the lyrics closely, 'cause I don't speak German and the official English translation is a pretty radical departure from the original, but there is one thing I was still able to notice. each verse begins with 99 of… something. it starts with 99 balloons, then 99 jet fighters, 99 war ministers, and finally 99 years of war. it's a dark, apocalyptic escalation, but each verse also ends the same way: with 99 balloons. always balloons, as if to say that none of this was necessary. it didn't have to become a war. people didn't have to fight, or die. it could have just been balloons. it's a reminder of the absurdity of the Cold War, with two global superpowers wrestling for control while staring down the existential risk of mutually assured destruction through nuclear armageddon. and it's a reminder that, at any moment, either one of them could blink, and this could all be over, and the only thing the people of West Berlin could do is hope that never happens. and fortunately, it never did. the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Germany was reunified not long after. but in 1982, they didn't know that yet. no one did. and no one knew for sure if it would always just be balloons, or if one day, without warning, it would be something a whole lot worse. the next soundscape is basically an intensified version of this one. Brendel switches off the hi-hat so he can play bigger snares, Karges starts holding his power chords instead of strumming them, and Dehmel goes from quarter notes to 8ths, while Fahrenkrog-Petersen takes Nena's melody and embellishes it. (bang) honestly, this reminds me a lot of what Dr. Alyssa Barna calls a dance chorus, a song section that comes after the main chorus, repeating certain elements, like the harmony, while adding new, distinctive timbres and intensifying the overall sound. the dance chorus encourages the listener to momentarily let go of the more literal, lyrics-based interpretation of the song and simply give in to the embodied movement of dance. Barna positions this as a recent development arising from the increased collaboration of EDM and modern pop, and like, this obviously isn't quite the same thing. after all, the previous section wasn't a chorus. this song doesn't have one. but the New Wave scene was also a conversation between pop music and the new electronic music of the time, so it makes sense that we'd see something similar. I interpret these sections not as complete narrative statements, but as the song giving you permission to let go. it says even in the shadows of war, people have to live their lives, and people have to dance. in dark times, joy and community aren't a luxury. they're the tools we need to survive, and Nena embraces that by making room in their apocalypse for a couple moments of triumphant, wordless release. it doesn't stop the horrors, but it does make them a little less horrible. and that brings me to the last soundscape, which means I need to confess something. in the original version, the song ends by returning to the ballad arrangement from the beginning: (bang) and that's fine. but it's not the version I grew up with. I'd never even heard it until I started working on this video. no, the version I know apparently comes from a 1991 compilation album called Nena: Die Band., and that version makes a much more interesting choice. check it out. (bang) yeah, I have no idea why they did this, but the version on that album replaces the final verse by splicing in a live recording where the whole crowd sings along. and isn't that so much better? don't you feel the warmth of this moment? if 99 Luftballons is about the way people live with the specter of nuclear war, then it makes so much sense to end with those people literally coming

### Segment 5 (20:00 - 22:00) [20:00]

together to sing that fear away. the lyrics of the final verse are set after 99 years of continuous war, leaving the world broken and empty, but the crowd here says the human spirit is not defeated. and maybe it can't be. maybe there will always be people willing to fight for each other, and more importantly, take care of each other. maybe no act of government violence, no matter how awful, can take that away from us. not completely. I like to think that's true. and that's why I love this silly little song that was never really about the balloons. it was about the people who believed strongly enough in peace to let them fly. but I grew up in a different era of global conflict, and one of the key musical voices for my generation was Linkin Park. which is why I was pretty excited when fellow music youtuber Michael Jesse tagged me in on a bizarre musical mystery involving one of their biggest hits, Breaking The Habit. put simply, no one seems to know what the chords are. Michael's video goes on a whole journey trying to figure out why, but in the end he wasn't able to find a completely satisfying answer, so he did what any good music theorist should do in that situation: he asked for my opinion. so yeah. I have thoughts, and I think I know what's going on, but if you want to see that, you're gonna have to check out patreon. for years now, I've avoided doing sponsorships because, quite frankly, most of the sponsors on youtube are really sketchy and I can't recommend something I don't trust. but these videos do take a lot of time and effort, way more than you might assume, so I've come to rely on my patreon patrons to help me afford to give it that time. and to say thanks, I always publish my videos early over there. the Linkin Park video will go up on youtube at some point, probably sometime next month if everything goes according to plan, but if you don't want to wait, it's already live over there. link, as always, in the description. and hey, thanks for watching. thanks to our featured patrons, Susan Jones, Jill Sundgaard, Howard Levine, Warren Huart, Damien Fuller-Sutherland, Neil Moore, and Geoff! check out Patreon for a fuller outro, and as always, keep on rockin'.