We are living in a time, where it often feels as if we are being presented with recycled culture, often in forms of re-makes or remixes. Younger generations are often unaware of the re-make/remix status of various media that they consume and even if they are aware of some factors, they are almost never aware of the entire story. Jay Z and Mr. Hudson’s Young Forever (2009) is a splendid example of this. Few who were not old enough to remember Alphaville’s Forever Young (1984) could have ever imagined that Young Forever took the chorus and ‘hook’ from an 80’s group. Even fewer could imagine that Alphaville is actually a German group whose lyrics “evoked images of nuclear destruction defiantly singing, ‘Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while/Heaven can wait, we’re only watching the skies/Hoping for the best but expecting the worst/Are you gonna drop the bomb or not’” (Klimke and Stapane [my printed version doesn’t have page numbers]), but this is indeed the truth as outlined in Nuclear Threats, Nuclear Fear, and the Cold War of the 1980s. Although keeping the exact same chorus and song text, that Klimke and Stapane indicated as ‘evoking images of nuclear destruction, Jay Z and Mr. Hudson’s version loses what the Alphaville version aimed to accomplish.
Clearly 2009 was drastically different than 1984. This is especially true when considering the lack of East-West Cold War tension and the threat of the ‘bomb.’ With that being said, however, some of the goals that activists, including musicians, set out to achieve during the 80s are still left largely unfinished and in some instances in much worse conditions than they were in the past. One aspect that is certainly left unfinished and that many would say is in a worse position now than it was then is the environment. Jay Z and Mr. Hudson could have used their sampling to further a similar ‘anti-nuclear’ message to contemporary listeners, but decided to send their track in an entirely different direction from Alphaville’s and send a ‘live in the moment’ or ‘yolo’ type message with their track. At first glace, a Jay Z track about any kind of nuclear agenda seems unlikely. However, it is not all that uncommon to see rappers go outside of their ‘traditional’ zones. For example, Lil Dicky, who is known for rapping about lighter themes, like saving money, recently released Earth (2019) as a clear move to raise awareness about human impact on earth.
Even though Jay Z could have taken a more active stance in Young Forever, his and Mr. Hudson’s sampling represents something that is lacking in Nuclear Threats, Nuclear Fear, and the Cold War of the 1980s (or at least chapter five). This lacking refers to misinterpretations of music. Klimke and Stapane point out some strong arguments for how a variety of artists used their music to promote political messages. Young Forever takes the heart of Forever Young, quoting the exact same text that Klimke and Stapane highlight as critical to their evoking of images of nuclear destruction and gives the text an entirely different meaning just 25 years after its original publication. This is only one example of a text gaining a different meaning other than its intention. There are many musical texts that come to mind, like the Beastie Boys Fight for your Right (1986) and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA (1984), both of which were received in different, almost opposite ways, than originally intended. Fight for your Right was intended to mock partying, but to this day remains a party anthem, while Born in the USA was meant to be a critique of the US/living situation of the main character, but quickly became seen as one of the ultimate American songs. Although the songs mentioned by Klimke and Stapane certainly sent the messages that they mentioned and were received by the audience, there is also the chance that the message could be altered as in the case of Young Forever or not received by the general public as in the case of Fight for your Right and Born to Run.
Works Cited:
Klimke, Martin and Laura Stapane. “From Artists from Peace to the Green Caterpillar”. Nuclear Threats, Nuclear Fears, and the Cold War of the 1980s, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Matt, I think your point about adaptation is an important one. Textual meaning is built on the tension between production and reception, and while production stays in one place, reception moves through time, and so meaning evolves. Music may be especially vulnerable to interpretation. Most listeners, I would argue, tend to favor either lyrics or rhythm in music, in the way that they experience songs in the moment and through memory. Musicians have their own tendencies as well, shaping meaning from a combination of words and sounds. But while music has a certain volatility, with the inherent risk of losing the intended message, it also offers an opportunity for change—that the text might live on in new and interesting ways. “99 Luftballons” is one such example.
“99 Luftballons” tells a story in which balloons and fireworks are mistaken for artillery fire, and nuclear war is launched. It’s a story about how men greedy for power will pay whatever cost for personal gain or national victory. It’s a story about human fallibility, mistaking harmless signals (associated with celebration and innocence) as nuclear aggression, or using hot air (that is, nothing) as an excuse for international conflict. It’s also a story about hope: hope that someone would survive nuclear holocaust to tell the tale, and hope that, if someone were to find a balloon responsible for all of that destruction, they wouldn’t think to pop it, in a symbol of shock and failure, but would instead let it go.
We find a different iteration of “99 Luftballons” in the TV series Scrubs, in the episode “My Interpretation” (2003). The narrator and protagonist, JD, isn’t sure how to tell his German patient that he may have cancer. JD wishes he had some way of connecting with the patient, and imagines the two of them dancing along to “99 Luftballons” in a hospital room filled with red balloons. It turns out that, while translating for JD, the patient’s brother didn’t tell him he had cancer. The brother wanted to protect him. The lesson JD learns and applies to his personal life is to stop trying to protect others when they don’t need protecting, and the theme for the episode is not to interpret situations as problems when they may not be.
(Clip available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg-vUGFz9Jk.)
In JD’s imagination, dancing to “99 Luftballons” is a way of communicating with his patient or, later in the episode, undoing some foolish comments he makes in front of the parents of “tasty coma wife”’s late husband. The balloons come to represent a cure-all for misunderstandings, not the cause of them. The difference in this context is that the threats are real, not imagined, although even this is arguable: results show that the patient doesn’t have cancer and, as we discover later in the season, tasty coma wife only dates JD for the drama. Either way, the episode does support the underlying principles of the song. It recognizes how decisions and actions are compromised by our motivations, even the good ones, and how we often fail in interpreting the world around us.
To conclude: I disagree with the literal approach to adaptation taken by the New York Times, as Valentina quotes in her post. Singing “99 Luftballons” for karaoke isn’t some high-minded acknowledgment of the song’s “sense of doom.” The song is fun and nostalgic and foreign. It’s just a good song for karaoke, and that’s okay. “99 Luftballons” is about bridging political and cultural gaps in understanding. In a way, there’s no better place to find that experience than in a karaoke bar.
Matt,
I agree with you that there is a lot of recycled art. However, a lot of art is timeless in the sense that it can gain a different meaning as time progresses and things happen for which a certain piece of art can really be a megaphone to express feelings. I am thinking about the famous painting “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. Most people associate it nowadays with the Holocaust. Yet, it was painted in 1893. It was inspired by a blood red sun set over Oslo and the original meaning the painter was trying to capture was that it looked like a scream of nature. However, after the Holocaust many victims were able to use this painting to express their feelings about what they had experienced. Going forward, nowadays we could go back to the original meaning and say that nature is screaming for redemption, because it is so polluted and so out of sync.