Lost in Translation Vol. 14
The "name that tune" series with a twist. Can you reconstruct the original lyric after translation through half a dozen languages and identify the song?
Lost in Translation is a weekly “name that tune” series with a twist. Every Monday I’ll present a song lyric which has been run through half a dozen languages before back translation into English. The translation process transmogrifies the lyric into something quite unlike the original and the challenge is for you, Dear Reader, to attempt to decipher the lyric and name the tune. Every weekend I’ll publish a new post with the translated lyric along with the original and a YouTube video timestamped to the start of the lyric.
It’s Monday, which can only mean one thing—it’s time for another installment of Lost in Translation! As revealed yesterday, last week’s song was “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life”, the title track from Indeep’s 1983 debut album. I figured that the song might be a challenging pick given its age and the genre but I also speculated that at least one of my readers would know it and I was (quite quickly) proven correct. I’m coming to the conclusion that I’m not very good at deciding which tracks will stump my readers, so I don’t want to make any predictions, but I do think this week’s song is perhaps a little harder than most.
This week we’re headed to the back half of the 90s with an alternative rock track (is that a suitably vague clue?). While this song didn’t make the Billboard Hot 100, it did reach the top ten on the alternative charts in both the US and Canada and made the top 40 in a few European countries.
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Translated Lyric
Here’s the lyric for this week’s Lost in Translation:
He hoped his memory would fade with time
For he raced, walked, and planned his journey
He fought, bit, and rode.
The sun went down, the moon rose.
If nobody’s scored the correct answer by midweek then I’ll be back on Notes with some more clues and on the weekend with the solution.
Hit me with your best shot folks!
Please head to the comments and let me know whether you’ve figured out this week’s song!!
(singing)
"He's going the distance! He's going for speed!"
Pretty sure this is "The Distance" by Cake
I’m going to try and make time on Mondays to do this as I’m falling down on the job. I think I could have gotten this one too, as I was a massive cake fan. Also a fan of the band. (Snare roll, cymbal crash). I’ll try again tomorrow.