Latest / The Culture Club: Books, Art, Film, Music & Entertainment / Singing in Tongues: The Magic of Lyrics You Don’t Understand | The Culture Club
Transcript
- You know that moment when a song hits you so hard your chest physically tightens, but you realize halfway through the chorus that you have absolutely no idea what is being said? That sudden, terrifying, beautiful vertigo is where I want to take you today. Let’s be honest for a second. We live in a world obsessed with translation. We want subtitles on our films, captions on our videos, and footnotes on our books. We are terrified of ambiguity. But art—real, pulsing, living art—often thrives in the space between understanding and feeling. I’m talking about the experience of listening to music in a language you don’t speak fluently, or perhaps not at all. It’s one of the most profound ways we can bypass our intellectual defenses and go straight for the jugular of emotion. Think about it. When you hear a singer’s voice crack, or swell with power, or drop to a whisper, your brain doesn’t need a dictionary to process that data. It needs only empathy. The human voice is an instrument first and a vehicle for words second. The texture of the sound carries its own narrative. A sigh in French sounds different than a shout in Japanese, even if you’re treating them as abstract noise. But they still tell you something. They tell you about longing, about joy, about rage, about exhaustion. By stripping away the literal meaning, we are forced to listen to the soul of the performance rather than just the syntax. And isn’t that what we’re really looking for? Not just information, but connection? I have a confession to make. For years, I was deeply insecure about my inability to sing along to certain classic tracks because I didn’t understand the lyrics. I remember sitting in my small apartment in Chicago during my twenties, listening to old Puccini recordings while trying to finish a manuscript that refused to cooperate. I had no formal training in Italian opera. I barely knew how to order coffee in Rome without gesturing wildly. But there was this one aria, ‘Nessun Dorma,’ and I would close my eyes and just let the tenor’s voice wash over me. I didn’t know he was asking everyone to guess his name and wait for dawn. I just knew he was screaming into the void, demanding victory against impossible odds. The vowels were open and resonant; the consonants were sharp and decisive. I felt the struggle in my throat. I felt the triumph in my bones. When I finally sat down with a translated libretto months later, reading the words felt almost secondary. The emotional truth had already been delivered. The music had done its job before the words ever arrived. This is why I say we must trust our ears more than our eyes. The body remembers what the mind forgets. What’s the texture of this? That’s a question I ask myself constantly, whether I’m reviewing a film or choosing a playlist for a rainy Tuesday. When you don’t understand the language, you become hyper-aware of phonetics. You notice how certain sounds cluster together. In Korean pop, or K-pop, for instance, the rhythmic precision of the syllables creates a percussive effect that drives the melody forward. You might not know the story of heartbreak told in the verse, but you feel the urgency in the staccato delivery. Or consider Fado, the traditional Portuguese music style known for its mournful melodies and candid accounts of the sea and hardship. Even if you don’t speak Portuguese, the way the singers stretch the vowels, letting them hang in the air like smoke, tells you everything you need to know about saudade—a word that has no direct English equivalent, describing a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for something or someone that has been removed. When we remove the barrier of comprehension, we stop analyzing and start sensing. We allow ourselves to be vulnerable to the raw frequency of another human being’s experience. It’s a form of radical empathy. You are admitting that you don’t need to know every detail to care deeply about the outcome. You are trusting that the artist has shared something true, even if it’s wrapped in a code you haven’t cracked yet. There is also a strange liberation in mishearing things. I call this the ‘Lisbon Effect.’ I once heard a Spanish ballad and spent three months convinced the protagonist was declaring undying love to a mythical bird named Estrella. It was actually a sad song about a train station goodbye. But for those three months, my life was infused with this whimsical, romantic fantasy. I walked around smiling at strangers, imagining birds watching over me. Was it accurate? No. Was it useful? Absolutely. Those misinterpretations become part of our personal mythology. We project our own desires onto the blank canvas of the unknown. And that’s okay. Art is not a locked room where only the keyholder can enter. It’s a communal garden. If you see a flower and think it’s a rose, even if it’s a tulip, you still get to enjoy the color. You still get to feel the beauty. This applies to film, too. Think about movies dubbed into languages you don’t know, or foreign films with subtitles you skim over. You catch snippets. A laugh here, a tear there. Your brain fills in the gaps with narrative logic based on visual cues. And often, the version your brain constructs is more personal, more tailored to your current mood, than the director’s original intent. Is that a failure of consumption? I argue it’s a success of creativity. You are co-authoring the experience. Of course, this approach requires a willingness to sit with discomfort. We are conditioned to seek clarity. We want the answer. We want the explanation. But when we engage with art in unfamiliar tongues, we are practicing tolerance for ambiguity. We are learning that we can be moved without being informed. We can be changed without being lectured. I think about the times I’ve resisted listening to music from cultures outside my own because I felt intimidated by my lack of context. I worried I wouldn’t ‘get it’ right. I worried I’d miss some subtle cultural reference that would leave me feeling excluded. But that fear is a gatekeeper. It keeps us in our echo chambers. It keeps us safe, yes, but it also keeps us small. When I force myself to listen to a track in a language I barely recognize, I am stepping out of my comfort zone. I am admitting ignorance. And in that admission, there is humility. There is curiosity. There is an invitation. The artist is saying, ‘Here is my pain, my joy, my history. Feel it, even if you can’t read it.’ And when you accept that invitation, you join a global conversation that doesn’t require fluency, only openness. You realize that the human heart beats in the same rhythm everywhere, regardless of the accent. So, here is my challenge for you this week. I want you to curate a playlist of songs in languages you do not speak. Any language. Arabic, Swahili, Icelandic, Mandarin. Doesn’t matter. Pick songs purely based on the melody, the cover art, or the recommendation of a friend whose taste you trust. Then, listen to them. Really listen. Close your eyes. Notice where your body reacts. Do you tense up? Do you relax? Do you want to dance? Do you want to cry? Don’t look up the translations until you’ve listened to the whole set. Let the mystery breathe. Let yourself be confused. Let yourself be surprised. And then, maybe, just maybe, look up the words. See if they match what you felt. See if they deepen what you felt. Or see if they completely contradict it. All of those outcomes are valid. All of them are art. We spend so much time trying to control our narratives, to explain our lives, to define our identities. Music offers us a break from that burden. It allows us to simply be vessels for emotion. To hold space for something bigger than ourselves. To sing along, even if we’re singing the wrong words. Because sometimes, the wrong words are the ones that set you free. Tell me more about that feeling. Tell me when you find it. Thank you for letting me into your headspace today. I’ll be back next week with another exploration of the weird and wonderful corners of culture. Until then, keep listening closely. I’m Stella Duarte, and I’ll see you in the velvet.