Lost in Translation Vol. 6 REVEALED

Lost in Translation is back with the answer to this week's song! And this week we had a winner!!

It’s Friday, which means we’re back with the answer to Monday’s Lost in Translation.

The Translated Lyric

Here’s the lyric I provided:

Being loved by someone is an amazing thing

It's not uncommon to spend quality time with someone.

But when I see you going with someone

No wonder I cry

oh i want to die

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The Original Lyric

And here’s the original lyric as it was before being passed through half a dozen languages:

It's not unusual to be loved by anyone

It's not unusual to have fun with anyone

But when I see you hanging about with anyone

It's not unusual to see me cry

Oh, I wanna die

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The Song

This week’s song, to me, felt closest to the original of anything that’s appeared in the Lost In Translation series. While the first two lines saw some fairly significant changes emerge from the translation process, the last three lines increasingly converged to the original, with the last line remaining essentially unchanged (“Oh, I wanna die” becomes “oh I want to die”). I wondered whether the similarity of the lyrics in the last three lines would be the giveaway this week.

The first person to respond to Monday’s post was Substack author extraordinaire Brad Kyle of Front Row & Backstage fame, who delivered with the correct song! What I found extremely interesting was how he actually arrived at the final answer. Brad, admittedly, is not a “lyrics guy” and it wasn’t actually the lyrics themselves that sealed the deal. Here’s what Brad wrote: “once I got the hang of the cadence, I began hearing Jones’s voice” (all of this while sitting in a busy restaurant with music blaring over the loudspeakers).

I’m not sure I’d ever be able to name a song by the cadence generated by reciting the lyrics in my head. I found this to be a fascinating example of the differences in the ways people experience music. I’m left wondering how many other people would have discerned the correct song in this way versus how many would have relied solely on the similarity of the lyrics.

Here’s a video, cued up at the start of the lyric, of Jones performing his hit on the Ed Sullivan Show in May 1965:

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Feel free to jump into the comments with your thoughts:

• How did you do? Were you close? Or completely stumped?

• Would you have been able to name the song from the original lyrics?

• Could you have figured out the song from the cadence created by reciting the lyrics in your head?

We’ll see you again on Monday with a new installment of Lost in Translation. Until then, happy listening!!