Scorpions’ ‘Winds Of Change’ Joins Spotify Billions Club
The track from the German band’s album ‘Crazy World’ is their first to cross one billion streams.
“Winds Of Change,” the classic rock ballad from Scorpions, has officially reached one billion streams on Spotify. The song, which comes from the band’s 11th album Crazy World and arrived just as the Cold War was ending, becomes their first song to reach the milestone.
As its title suggests, “Winds Of Change” debuted at a time of social and political tumult. But this wasn’t simply a coincidence; Scorpions created the song after a trip to Moscow in the 1980s inspired the group to recognize the shared humanity between themselves and the Russian people. “We took the boat down the Moskva River. And we were on this boat with all the bands, with MTV journalists, with Red Army soldiers… It was an inspiring moment for me,” lead singer Klaus Mein recalled in a 2015 oral history of the song for Rolling Stone. Guitarist Rudolph Schenker added, “The [Berlin] Wall had not come down yet, but it was here, in Moscow, where you could feel everything coming. Gorbachev was bringing glasnost and perestroika! The world was changing. Somehow Klaus picked up on that vibe.”
Crazy World arrived as the Berlin Wall was coming down, indelibly linking the German band with the moment in history. When “Winds Of Change” was released as a single in 1991, it was a global smash, reaching number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topping charts in Austria, France, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
The track has also endured thanks, in part, to Scorpions’ willingness to reimagine it over the years. The band has since performed it with orchestras and choirs and recorded it in Spanish and Russian. “But to do the Russian version was the challenge. It wasn’t easy. And until this day I don’t know how good it is,” Meine quipped years later. “But even now, when we play in Russia I sing at least one chorus of the song in their language.”
