I was listening to my Spanish playlist the other day (which primarily consists of Julieta Venegas and Marissa Mur), and realised that while I’ve been enjoying the music, I haven’t actually been thinking about what the lyrics mean.
Because of this, a few days ago, I decided to look at the English translation of one of my favourite songs – a love song fittingly named ‘Canciones de amor’ by Julieta Venegas, meaning literally ‘love songs’. I found the meaning very interesting, so I decided to make an analysis on it. Doing this made me realise how many great songs and lyrics there are in the world, just made unknown because of a language barrier.
For a little bit of context: Julieta Venegas is a famous Mexican singer, who became famous in the early 2000s for her pop music in Latin America, earning countless prizes and Grammys Latinos. This song is from her album 4th studio album ‘Limon y Sal’, which came out in 2006.
As the lyrics are quite long, I won’t attach them here, but the general point of the song is how tired the speaker is of love songs, because, despite talking about happiness, love is idealised within these songs, portraying a perfection that does not exist in real life.
I think that the song’s upbeat, happy tune reflects the accepting attitude that someone can have when recounting a love of the past – maybe this song could have been a way for the speaker to cope and to laugh about her old, innocently hopeful attitude towards romance. However, I think that it could also be reminiscent of that in-love, hazy, joyful trance that she used to be in in the past.
It could, however, ironically be the representative of exactly what she highlights in the song – she says that love songs are always false in what they say, so perhaps she made this song sound happy, like a love song, but this supposed happiness turned out to be false (due to the realistic, defeated lyrics), therefore reinstating her disappointment of not receiving what she expected at the beginning of a love story.
I find the structure of this song interesting – it alternates between the failed attempts of her love story in the past, and also her present lament about the illusion of love songs. I think this symbolises the need to remind herself about this reality – how every time she reminds herself about the happy past, she is retelling the truth which she has learnt when the colours faded into grey.
The chorus of the song always has stuck out to me – I love how seemingly cheerful and light-hearted it seems, even with what seems to be an echo afterwards at one point, perhaps portraying the chant-like repetition in the speaker’s mind. The song ends with many the repeating line ‘nunca funciona así’, which means ‘(real life) never works like this’ – I think that this line is one of my favourites of this song, especially because it is clear that, behind that joyful tune, a lot of time, emotions, and lessons learnt are subtly expressed.
I would really recommend the songs of Julieta Venegas! Especially this one – it really helped me through my GCSEs (I would always listen to it in the mornings before my Spanish exams). Her whole album, ‘Limón y Sal’, is absolutely fantastic as well – it’s definitely my favourite by her.
