Flaca (1997) – Andrés Calamaro

Flaca (Skinny) is the second song posted here from Argentine rock-great Andrés Calamaro after his exceptional – Cuando No Estás. I wrote how my seven-year-old daughter Katherine Rose introduced me to his music a little while back and I have been a fan ever since.
Kat is pictured left with a modern ‘Great’ of domestic Colombian Football – Macalister Silva). This photo was taken just yesterday by yours truly at my son’s football training with the ‘Millionarios (Millionaires) Academy‘ in Bogota.

Kat like a lady possessed plays today’s featured track ‘Flaca‘ (Skinny) over and over again and has done for ages. I can’t blame her because it’s one of my favourite Latin rock songs too. I never grow tired of hearing it. Also, Calamaro’s inclination to present a sound and ‘look’ reminiscent of Bob Dylan won’t make me like him any less. On the contrary, I always thought until hearing him that strains of ‘Dylan-esque’ texture and music were sorely missing from Latin American music.

A loose English translation of Flaca follows:

[Chorus]
Skinny, don’t stick your daggers in my back
So deep, they don’t hurt me
They don’t hurt me.

Far away in the center of the Earth
the roots of love
Where they were, they will remain.

[Verse]
come in forget me not
I left our forgotten years
In the back of the closet
From the guest room.
those were golden times
From a better past.

Although I was almost wrong
And I tell you little by little
Do not lie to me
don’t tell me the truth
Do not stay silent
don’t raise your voice
Don’t ask me for forgiveness

Although I almost confess to you
That I have also been a companion dog
An ideal dog that learned to bark
and go back home
To eat

Flaca is the second single by Argentine musician Andrés Calamaro, included on his solo album Alta Suciedad, released in 1997 and with more than 176 million views on YouTube. It is the most viewed and well-known song by the artist.1 It ranks 23rd on the list of The 100 Most Outstanding Songs of Argentine Rock. Both the single and the solo album were acclaimed by the public, the song as such is considered the most representative and well-known of the artist.

Calamaro stated:

Flaca is a song that has an instrumental development with very small movements, because it revolves around the same harmony, it is monotonous and at the end it has a change in the harmony that becomes a little more complex within the same chords and through the new notes and colors that the harmony has is where the instruments and the voice of the last melody begin to sound. For me it is a song that has more importance in the musical than in the lyrical.
Flaca can be understood as the string of ‘innocent’ lies that one tells out of love, wanting to say one and ending up saying the opposite: don’t lie to me, don’t tell me the truth

Reference:
1. Flaca (canción) – Wikipedia