Talk:Forever Young (Alphaville song)

A fading horse?

What does the line "I don't want to perish like a fading horse" mean?Mr.WaeseL 22:50, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

A fading horse is one who runs in the lead but drops to the back of the pack before the finish. Watching that happen, it seems -- has the emotional taste -- that the horse simply loses heart and gives up. So, the upshot is, if you don't give up and perish like a fading horse, you can remain forever young ... if you don't remain forever young, and die young (whether it be at 25 or 95), you fade.

"Anti-war"? Meaning of the Song

Is the single line “ Are you going to drop the bomb or not?” really enough for this to be an “notable anti-war song” as per Category:Anti-war songs? -Ahruman 14:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I would agree; it is not even clear that they are referring to the use of nuclear weapons rather than a metaphor. Eran 04:12, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Of course it is an anti-war song. Can you imagine when this race is won? --87.177.242.64 (talk) 22:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

The article could use some information about the Cold War (nuclear arms race). "we're only watching the skies; are you going to drop the bomb or not; can you imagine if this race is won?" The text couldn't be any clearer and it's from 1984, look at the chart I linked. --82.171.70.54 (talk) 01:52, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

It's certainly a song about nuclear war. Why else is the person in the song dying young and thus "Forever young"?

Especially as nuclear war was a huge concern in Europe during these decades and perhaps especially (West) Germany which was on the front line(s) of the Iron Curtain.Historian932 (talk) 23:26, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

76.181.171.165 (talk) 17:53, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with all the comments. There should be mention of what the song is about in the article. The song is definitely about nuclear war and the fear of the world being destroyed by nuclear war. Qewr4231 (talk) 02:44, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

I agree too. How individual Wikipedia users personally interpret the lyrics (referring to the second comment, the one from 2007) should not be of any major significance. There are plenty of reliable sources out there stating that the song is about the threat of nuclear war (which was quite imminent at the time). Kindest regards. /EriFr (talk) 13:05, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

staying on topic?

Shouldn't this page be about the Alphaville 'version' of the song? There's a lot of extraneous information regarding the Youth Group cover version...

Thats because a couple of weeks ago, Forever Young (Youth Group song) was merged into this one. Personally I think the song is well known enough that it should have its own article. -- Chuq 00:37, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the first poster. To me this article is schizophrenic, especially when the "Youth Group" article, complete with the box with album art and release dates, is pasted directly underneath it. I think "Youth Group" article should be deleted. 82.196.205.162 (talk) 15:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

No, the Youth Group version should not be deleted. It is notable in its own right as a single which charted. In cases like this, where a cover version of a particular song has charted as a single, it is pretty common practice to give it its own section within the main article about the song. This is better coverage, not worse. Remember, this article is about the song, not just 1 version of the song. Various versions/covers of the song deserve mention in the article, and versions which are notable in their own right deserve independent sections if sufficient source material exists. If you feel that the coverage of the Youth Group cover is disproportionate to the coverage of the original Alphaville version, you are welcome to look up references and expand the Alphaville portion of the article. The article should be expanded & improved, not split up or stripped. --IllaZilla (talk) 22:26, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

As the above poster states, the topic of this article is the song, not the Alphaville version. As the Alphaville version was the first and most notable, it deserves primary focus, but not at the expense of details about other versions which has been whittled down in this article. There are many song articles which include separate paragraphs, headed sections, and even infoboxes on notable versions which in some cases were unreleased or only very minor hits; this is common practice at Wikipedia. I agree with the above poster that the best way to give proportionate weight to the original or most notable version(s) is not to edit down relevant and reasonable information about covers, but instead to research and add information to the primary section. Having said that, there are some articles where the lesser versions do have an unreasonable amount of detail, such as several different track listings of remixes for each different country the song was released in, thus taking up more space than more notable versions. However, the Youth Group version here is both especially notable given its number-one charting and very reasonable in terms of size devoted to that section. When the Alphaville version is beefed up, then more detailed coverage of the various other versions will reflect well upon Alphaville for writing and introducing such a perennially popular song. Abrazame (talk) 00:23, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

OK. You've convinced me. No deleting.90.149.7.50 (talk) 20:00, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Who wrote this song? Was it written by Alphaville or Marian Gold? I don't see this mentioned in the article at all. Qewr4231 (talk) 05:58, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Rewrite

I pretty much re-wrote the whole article, bringing together a lot of stray bits and cutting out some useless ones. I started by rewriting the Trivia section as prose, but then realized the whole thing needed re-structuring. As you can see, there is now a separate section for the Youth Group cover of the song with its own infobox. This is pretty common practice in other articles where you have a song that's been released as a single multiple times in multiple cover versions. Since both the Alphaville and Youth Group versions were released as singles, but they're versions of the same song, they belong in the same article. I also added a reference for most of the info on the Youth Group version. --IllaZilla 01:28, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Is there a precedent for articles on songs not having trivia sections? I don't recall if I have seen others that do; obviously, we should follow the consensus but I don't know what that is. Eran of Arcadia 18:42, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Karel Gott version

Karel Gott has sung a version of this recently (2007, I think) on his new CD. There was a commercial of it in german TV some time ago. However, he used german text. --Con^structor 16:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Bob Dylan's song of the same name

I think there should be another article added for Bob Dylan's excellent 1973 song Forever Young on Planet Waves. It's a completely different song except for the title. I am a newby here and not inclined to write a new page, after trying to figure out the procedure for doing so. Cooljazz2 (talk) 18:20, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

See WP:MUSIC#Songs for criteria on notability of songs. As for writing an article, there are easy instructions to go by at Wikipedia:Your first article. --IllaZilla (talk) 20:17, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I think this is the same song. 67.188.47.155 (talk) 02:36, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not, I assure you. Completely different song. Here's the Bob Dylan song, with on-screen lyrics. Here's the Alphaville song (& here are the lyrics). Except for having the same title, they could not be more different. --IllaZilla (talk) 03:42, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

So why anyone thought discussion of Dylan's song belonged on this page is beyond me. Smurfmeister (talk) 12:13, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Possibly because the songs have the same name ? artistic reasons ? 2600:1702:2340:9470:CD0A:B8B3:6F63:3690 (talk) 00:29, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Tiffany version

This song was also covered by Tiffany, see http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VDZSP8/ref=dm_mu_dp_trk6. Frade (talk) 11:33, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

IllaZilla

I'd like to ask you why you're choosing to revert only one of a series of unreferenced media usages of the song? I saw the 30 Rock episode. You can too. First a character sings a few lines of the song a cappella (around 15 minutes in), then later the Alphaville version plays over a montage (about 17 minutes in). There are scads of somewhat reliable-seeming blogs out there discussing the episode, as no doubt you, the responsible editor you are, have already found out. Abrazame (talk) 11:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

As I said in my edit summaries, If you want to cite it to a reliable source (not youtube or random blogs), then there's no problem. The presence of other unref'd crap doesn't justify adding more. In fact, any of that other unreferenced stuff you are free to remove as you see fit. --IllaZilla (talk) 19:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I thought I'd point out to you that this is the second time you haven't actually answered the question. Perhaps you'd acknowledge that certain types of blogs are reliable sources for certain types of unexceptional claims, such as that a song was used in a TV episode. The Wikipedia article about the television episode, after all, is itself sourced to a blog. Abrazame (talk) 23:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I believe I've answered the only actual question you've asked: I reverted it because it was unreferenced, and I didn't revert any of the other ones because, frankly, I don't feel like cleaning the whole thing up. But you're welcome to remove any and all unref'd ones if you feel like doing so. None of those blogs above appear to pass WP:RS. This being an "unexceptional claim", it should be easy to find a more reliable source than a blog. For example, the credits of the episode itself? Surely those are available somewhere. --IllaZilla (talk) 07:49, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Page protection?

I'm noticing a recent spate of vandalism in this article... perhaps we should mark this article as semi protected for a while, to block anonymous edits? 87Fan (talk) 22:14, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I haven't noticed any vandalism, just a bunch of edits that, while in good faith, weren't helpful. In the last 3 weeks I've only had to do 6 reverts, and none of them really qualify as vandalism, so there isn't enough recent disruption to meet the semi-protection criteria. --IllaZilla (talk) 23:24, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, thanks!! 87Fan (talk) 16:44, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Pachelbel?

This song sounds awfully Pachelbel-ish, although I can't tell for sure whether it's actually based on Pachelbel or not (as a lot of other pop songs other). Does anyone know? Might be worth adding if it's true. Stonemason89 (talk) 01:42, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

You'd need a reliable source to verify that claim, otherwise it's original research. --IllaZilla (talk) 02:39, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I did some more research and it looks like it might just be a coincidence. Here, [1], on Alphaville's official website, someone asked Bernhard Lloyd if the song was based on Pachelbel's Canon, to which Lloyd responded that he had never heard of Pachelbel's Canon (!). Stonemason89 (talk) 16:23, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe not heard of, but he has obviously heard it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.15.153.75 (talk) 21:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The Alphaville template

Hi. I was glancing at the article, and it looks as though the Alphaville template is not at the very bottom, which is unlike most Wikipedia "bottom of the article" templates I've ever seen. I don't know how to fix this. Could a Wikipedian with some experience fix this? My explanation wasn't very good, but I've managed to paste what it looks like into this talk page, so you'll know what I'm talking about. Thanks. 24.10.181.254 (talk) 02:45, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh also, if no one takes care of this in the next little while, I'll Be Bold and give it a try. I resisted the urge just in case I mess things up, but I guess it can always be reversed, right? (I'll be the first to admit I don't know how to reverse stuff like that, so just to be safe, I'll see first if anyone else has ambition enough to take care of this.) Regards, 24.10.181.254 (talk) 02:45, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

One other thing, the preview of what I typed made the template show, but after I saved, it had it closed. So just click "show" on the blue bar that says "Alphaville", and you'll see what I mean. Okay, enough talk from me. 24.10.181.254 (talk) 02:47, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

The template you're referring to is called a navbox, and you're right, it should be at the bottom. I've moved it. Navboxes have some automatic features that cause them to appear either open or closed depending on how much other content there is on the page. --IllaZilla (talk) 17:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Jay-Z

Jay Z did a cover of the song, and although I didn't like it should it be mentioned here? --Trulystand700 (talk) 16:53, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I believe it's mentioned in the covers section of the article. 87Fan (talk) 19:25, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

It's there, under "Cover versions". Jay-Z's isn't actually a cover version, it's a song called "Young Forever" that heavily samples and borrows lyrics from "Forever Young". --IllaZilla (talk) 20:17, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Historical source of line

"Do you really want to live forever?" comes from the Battle of Kolin in 1757 when Frederick the Great chided his troops for retreating ("Ihr Racker, wollt ihr ewig leben?"). Historian932 (talk) 12:39, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

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