Forever Young

Last April I wrote about and shared "99 Luftballons" in which I not only discussed the song but the context in which it was created. I then connected that theme to the currently rising fears here on the West Coast of the United States of a nuclear attack upon California by way of North Korea. In that piece I mentioned that song by German artist Nena was to my mind the best and most famous of songs + music videos to express the 1980's generation's fears and opposition to the "nuclear Sword of Damocles" looming over them and threatening to snuff them out in their prime. Certainly it was more obviously a protest song and was rather region-specific to Germany although it certainly applied in principle to everybody everywhere. To my mind the second best and second most famous of 1980's songs + music videos to address this concern and in a not-so-regional-specific way and most certainly more existentialist fashion was another German artist Alphaville's "Forever Young" which I share below as well as its lyrics below that. This 1984 song was one of the best early examples of the future direction of pop music as it pertained to the coming growing emphasis of synthesizers in pop music which now are basically just another instrument as integral to a pop band as a guitar or drums and in the case of a deejay or electronic band is their ONLY instrument or nearly so.

Note: I placed parenthesis around "nuclear Sword of Damocles" above because I can proudly say that although I came up with that from my own creativity yet I also discovered when looking up Wiki link to the expression "Sword of Damocles" to place here for those not familiar with it I found that President Kennedy used that very same precise expression in a 1961 speech to the United Nations regarding the threat of nuclear war at that time.



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?

Let us die young or let us live forever
We don't have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music's for the sad men

Can you imagine when this race is won
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders, we're getting in tune
The music's played by the, the mad men

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever?
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever? Forever young

Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later, they all will be gone
Why don't they stay young?

It's so hard to get old without a cause
I don't want to perish like a fading horse
Youth's like diamonds in the sun
And diamonds are forever

So many adventures couldn't happen today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams swinging out of the blue
We let them come true

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever?
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever?

Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?

Lyrics courtesy of AZLyrics.com