Everyday Is Better Than The Next

99 Red Balloons was a song by Nena in the early 80’s. The song was originally called “99 Luftballons” and was performed in German. It is a story about how some simple balloons triggered a war that eventually destroyed everything that we know of. Considering the time and place that this song was written in, this idea was not to far fetched. In the early 80’s, while we Americans living the good life with a new found economy, countries like Germany sat on the front lines of Reagan’s renewed cold war. Germans were living with buildings that still showed forty-year-old scars, armed border guards, and a massive wall that divided their country. War was a part of life in that place at that time. More so then I could ever imagine.

99 Red Balloons 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, bugs 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.
Where 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.
Scramble in the summer sky.
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 souvenier.
Just to prove the world was here.
And here is a red balloon
I think of you and let it go