Sunday, April 08, 2007

"Sonríe" for English-speakers

I should have mentioned, I suppose, that the Luis Miguel song "Sonríe" that I like so much and wanted help translating, is a Spanish version (with the same emotions but rather different lyrics) of the old standard "Smile," which you can hear Nat King Cole sing here in English. (Nat's version is far superior to Jimmy Durante's, I have to say, but Luis can hold his own with anybody.)

That link also gives you the English lyrics, by the way.

And I suppose I should also mention that even those of you who don't listen to the old standards and have no idea what Nat King Cole's or Tony Bennett's or Jimmy Durante's voice sounds like, stand a good chance of having heard this song recently -- Gina Glockson sang it as her farewell song after having been voted off of "American Idol" last week, and given that Gina was openly broken-hearted at having been voted off, and yet pulled herself together to give a thoroughly moving performance of a song that is very much not in her own rock'n'roll metier, I'd say that if you saw her farewell you'll remember this song for a very long time. Frankly, I'd love to have a recording of Gina's farewell take; it would go onto my five-star iPod rotation. (Which isn't actually on an iPod; it's on my laptop, but you know what I mean.)

This isn't her farewell performance; it's the performance that wasn't good enough to keep her from getting voted off. But the farewell performance -- which I thought was better -- isn't, alas, on YouTube.

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