By Mike Sain't Louis ·
El canario que miente and his nice-guy smile
Everyone knows one. The one people like straight away, who greets everyone by name, who prompts that unanimous comment: he seems so nice. This track is about him, or rather, against him.
The title, «El canario que miente» (The Canary Who Lies), already plays with a very precise image. The canary is a small yellow bird with a pretty song, the most harmless pet you can think of. Nobody suspects a canary. And that's exactly why it works as a portrait of certain people: those who chirp sweetly while they're deceiving you.
The liar's three gestures
What interests me most about this track is how well it identifies that person's gestures. First, the smile, the shield behind which everything hides. Second, the oath: swearing on his parents' lives, on all that's sacred, while he already has the next lie ready. And third, the most twisted, the fake humility. That way of making himself small, the one who doesn't want to bother anyone, who asks for nothing, when what he really wants is to control everything.
That last point seems to me the hardest to see from inside. Controlling people often don't shout or impose. They present themselves as fragile, as simple folk, and from there they move the pieces. The song points it out bluntly.
There's a very Spanish expression, «ser un trozo de pan» (to be a piece of bread), used to say someone is a sweetheart, incapable of hurting anyone. This track turns it around: here the piece of bread always comes with poison. I find it a perfect image, because it sums up the feeling of someone who has trusted a person like that and then seen the deception. What looked like nourishment was something else.
The song works like a mirror that shows the real image of the supposed nice guy and strips off his disguise in front of everyone. There's anger, but also a lot of clarity, that of someone who has already figured out the trick and won't fall for it again.
It's part of that PLANETA GAYFOLK universe that laughs at manipulators and gives them a name, and for me it's one of the sharpest pieces in the series.
Dedicate it to the canary in your life. I'm sure you already know who it is.