Não Identificado

"Unidentified"
by Caetano Veloso
on Gal Costa (1969)
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This song always puts me in a good mood. I mean, is there anything sweeter than Gal's voice on this track? And I love the way Caetano is able to mix a lounge-ish sound - using the electric organ (or whatever that instrument is), strings and flute - with weird and jarring "space sounds." To me they seem to feed off of each other rather than clash against each other. I also love the image of people in a town in the middle of nowhere looking up in the sky at night and seeing something brightly burning, and it being a love song launched into space.

A few of notes about this song's lyrics in Portuguese:

1. I've translated "um iê-iê-iê romântico" as a "sweet rock n' roll tune." I knew that "iê-iê-iê" was a style of early Brazilian rock, but when I did some good old Googling, I found out that the name is actually a transliteration of the phrase "yeah, yeah, yeah", taken from the Beatles song "She Loves You." So, if someone can suggest a more specific adjective for that style than "rock n' roll," please let me know.

2. I hate to use the word "record" twice in the phrase "record it on a flying record." It reminds me of that line in Austin Powers: "Allow myself to introduce...myself." In Portuguese the two words are different, but I couldn't think of any other verb to say "record," and I didn't want to use the word "disc" because I feel like that implies a CD and not a record, although in Portuguese you can use the word "disc" for both, as evidenced here.

3. The phrase "country town" doesn't quite give the full meaning of "uma cidade do interior" in Portuguese. As you can probably guess from the Portuguese word "interior," the lyrics are referring to a town in the "interior" of Brazil. And this touches on one of the fundamental differences in the historical development of the US and Brazil. Brazil's interior is and always has been greatly underdeveloped in comparison to its coast. So, I would say that "uma cidade do interior" is somewhere a little more remote and a little more rustic than an American might normally associate with the term "country town."

Lyrics

I'm gonna write a song for her
A simple, Brazilian song
And launch it after Carnaval

Eu vou fazer uma canção pra ela
Uma canção singela, brasileira
Para lançar depois do Carnaval

I'm gonna write her a sweet rock n' roll tune
A love sick anticomputer

Eu vou fazer um iê-iê-iê romântico
Um anticomputador sentimental

I'm gonna write her a love song
And record it on a flying record (x2)

Eu vou fazer uma canção de amor
Para gravar num disco voador

A song telling her everything
That I'm still alone, and in love
And launch it into outer space

Uma canção dizendo tudo a ela
Que ainda estou sozinho, apaixonado
Para lançar no espaço sideral

My love will shine in the night
Up in the sky over some country town

Minha paixão ha de brilhar na noite
No céu de uma cidade do interior

Like an unidentified flying object (x3)

Como um objeto não identificado

That I'm still alone and in love
Like an unidentified flying object
To record on a flying record

Que ainda estou sozinho apaixonado
Como um objeto não identificado
Para gravar num disco voador

I'm gonna write her a love song
Like an unidentified flying object

Eu vou fazer uma canção de amor
Como um objeto não identificado

END