Cold lights, hot heart
The opening synths flink like a late-night sign coming up. With clipped accuracy, the drum machine clicks forward locking into a groove that feels both tenuous and forceful. Half-hoping nobody hears it, half-hoping someone does, Nena sings like someone mumbling a secret into the abyss. The track speeds, yet not dangerously. Under the melody, there is a tension resembling a daydream on a wire.
Her voice has a kind of trembling clarity. Not a cry, not a wail, but something tighter, like breath held too long. All about a dream, a maybe, a wish spoken too late, the words float in and out of reach. The synths sparkle; the guitars remain muted in the rear; her voice extends across the distance like bright vapor. Each phrase resembles a note passed in class, read rapidly, hidden promptly.
There was this before the globe knew 99 Luftballons. Nena was still performing on modest stages in 1982 with the band that had recently taken her moniker as its name. She had returned to German with sharper edges and more heart from The Stripes, a previous work sung in English. Only Geträumt arose from that change. It came from evenings in West Berlin, from radio static, from the sound of trains in empty stations.
I had then for myself always such very fitting ideas and then I came with the red miniskirt and the guys liked it and I liked it anyway.
(Nena, 1982)
Musikladen brought the tipping point. She smiled without hesitation, moved as though she was chasing something, and wore red. That show altered the air. The lines on the telephone lit up. Teens recorded it from the television. The song did not request authorization. It entered, left its mark, and stayed trapped in heads well past the last note.
It still throbs with the same bizarre power today. Like leather jackets in dance halls, like sleep that never comes, it smells like hairspray and chilly air. Though the chords are basic, the emotion is not. Nur Geträum did not have to scream to be remembered. It persisted playing long after the dream stopped under the surface.
