Podcast Asks: Did C.I.A. Write Scorpions Hit

The very early 1990’s were a unique moment in music when Grunge was about to explode, power-rock ballads were the rage and many of those power ballads featured whistling as part of their intros…like that one by Guns N’ Roses and that other one by Guns N’ Roses.

And also this one by The Scorpions:

Now, according to Scorpions singer Klaus Meine, the purported writer of the song (more on that coming up), he was inspired to write the song after playing at the Moscow Music Peace Festival in 1989. Meine says that he was struck by had much the Soviet Union had changed since he had last visited, just a year before in 1988.

But there’s an alternate claim that the song, one of the bestselling singles of all time, was actually written by the Central Intelligence Agency as part of their ongoing cold war propaganda campaign against the Soviets.

The 8 episode podcast is hosted by investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe who says,

I’ve had so much fun pursuing this crazy story over the course of a year, exploring the dark byways of Cold War history and doing nearly a hundred interviews in four countries with rockers and spies.

The “Wind of Change Podcast” premieres May 11 on Spotify. If it turns out the CIA actually did write that Scorpions song to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union, someone need to look into David Hasselhoff because that dude must have been a straight-up member of Seal Team 6!