"Wind of Change" is a power ballad by the West German rock bandScorpions, recorded for their eleventh studio album, Crazy World. The song was composed and written by the band's lead singer Klaus Meine and produced by Keith Olsen and the band. The lyrics were composed by Meine following the band's visit to the USSR at the height of perestroika, when the enmity between the communist and capitalist blocs subsided concurrently with the promulgation of large-scale socioeconomic reforms in the USSR. "Wind of Change" was released as the album's third single in January 1991 and became a worldwide hit, just after the failed coup that would eventually lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The song topped the charts in Germany and across Europe while peaking at number four in the United States on August 31, 1991, and at number two in the United Kingdom. It later appeared on the band's 1995 live albumLive Bites, their 2000 album with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Moment of Glory, and on their 2001 unplugged album Acoustica. The band also recorded a Russian-language version of the song, under the title "Ветер перемен" and a Spanish version called "Vientos de Cambio". With estimated sales of 14 million copies sold worldwide, "Wind of Change" is one of the best-selling singles of all time. It holds the record for the best-selling single by a German artist. The band presented a gold record and $70,000 of royalties from the single to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.
Background and writing
The lyrics celebrate glasnost in the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and speaks of hope at a time when tense conditions had arisen due to the fall of Communist-run governments among Eastern Bloc nations beginning in 1989. The Scorpions were inspired to write the song after performing at the Moscow Music Peace Festival in August 1989, and the opening lines refer to the city's landmarks:
I follow the Moskva Down to Gorky Park Listening to the wind of change
The Moskva is the name of the river that runs through Moscow, and Gorky Park is an urban park in Moscow named after the writer Maxim Gorky. The song also contains a reference to the balalaika, which is a Russian stringed instrument somewhat like a guitar. The balalaika is mentioned in the following lines:
Let your balalaika sing What my guitar wants to say
Composition
"Wind of Change" opens with a clean guitar intro played by Matthias Jabs, which is played alongside Klaus Meine's flat whistle. The song's guitar solo is played by Rudolf Schenker.
Legacy
The song became associated with the Revolutions of 1989 and the Fall of the Berlin Wall also in 1989 and was performed by the Scorpions at the Brandenburg Gate on 9 November 1999, during the 10th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. In 2005, viewers of the German television networkZDF chose this song as the song of the century. "Wind of Change" is featured in the films In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Gentlemen Broncos, The Interview, and Love Island, and the video game SingStar Rocks!. Most recently the song can be heard in the opening scene of the action comedy filmThe Spy Who Dumped Me starring Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon and Justin Theroux. The song is also featured in television showsMelrose Place, Chuck, and Car Share. The song is the subject of the podcast "Wind of Change", released May 11, 2020, raising questions regarding the song's origin. The podcast suggests that the song was written by or connected to the CIA, citing a rumor originating allegedly from inside the agency. In a SiriusXM interview with Eddie Trunk on May 13, 2020, Meine stated "It’s a podcast, and there will be a lot of people who will get into this. It’s a fascinating idea, and it’s an entertaining idea, but it’s not true at all.”
