German heavy metallers The Scorpions hit paydirt a quarter of a century after formation with this overblown power ballad about the fall of communism.

This is not the sort of song I really like, and indeed I had no time for it when it was a huge hit in 1991.

But after the election results in Brazil and Serbia, with nationalist populists sent packing at the polls – hopefully followed by voters doing the same in Israel and America – its message is too important to ignore.

It’s one of the biggest selling singles of all time, with sales of over 14 million. And entirely atypical for the hard-rocking heavy metal band.

The Scorpions’ lead singer, Klaus Meine, wrote the big power ballad following the German band’s visit to the Soviet Union at the height of perestroika.

In 1989 the band had played to an audience of 300,000 at a peace festival in Moscow’s Lenin Stadium.

“The idea came to me in the U.S.S.R. when I was sitting in the Gorky Park Center one summer night, looking at the Moskva River,” he recalled. “The song is my personal reappraisal of what has happened in the world in recent years.”

The lyrics celebrate glasnost in the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and speak 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.

Wind Of Change gave the band a belated breakthrough into the pop mainstream, after 25 years, appearing on their 11th album.

That was partially down to fortunate timing, with the song being released just after the failed coup that led – eventually- to the end of the USSR.

A power ballad building to Rudolph Schenker’s searing guitar solo, it topped the charts in Germany and six other countries across Europe, peaking at No 2 in the UK.

They made an even more overblown version on their 2000 album with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as a live version and an unplugged version.

In 1991, the band presented a gold record disc and $70,000 of royalties from the single to Mikhail Gorbachev, with Soviet news sources reporting the money would be allocated to children’s hospitals.
More recently they have rewritten the lyrics to reference Ukraine.