Today, for A Year In December, I talk about something by Natalia Lafourcade.
I don’t remember the specific book in the Hitchhiker’s series by Douglas Adams though it might have been So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, the protagonist Arthur Dent learns bird language. After a while, he realises it’s incredibly boring and in a comical way that only Adams could write, Dent soon realises it’s impossible to unlearn a language. I don’t often think this with the languages I learn, though for the four minute and thirty-nine seconds that Natalia Lafourcade’s ‘Lo Que Construimos’ runs, I wish I didn’t know Spanish. How can a chorus with the purest of singalong DNA be about a breakup? How did Lafourcade write this so succinctly? How did she combine such painful lyrics with that chirpy guitar rhythm and make it sound like it was the most natural pairing? Sometimes, I wish I weren’t even able to ask these questions to begin with.
Joel Mak 