By Mike Sain't Louis ·
Nadie hablará de mí cuando haya muerto: a funeral with black humour
Two friends, at most. Maybe one. That's the headcount made by the protagonist of Nadie hablará de mí cuando haya muerto (Nobody Will Talk About Me When I'm Dead), mentally sitting in the front row of their own funeral and counting chairs.
I love this premise because it mixes two things we do very well in Spain: drama and banter. The song imagines the farewell in full detail: the mother, the father, the last partner who, rightly, also ends up drifting away. And the gossips, of course, who are never missing at a wake: «El que se creía un genio» (The one who thought he was a genius).
There's a scene with the priest who wants to give the last rites and ends up sent out of the house, with a sour goodbye, leaving through the door very stern. It's a tense and very theatrical moment, the kind that in a copla would be the closing tableau of the second act.
The jump on the grave
And then comes the reference that amuses me most. There'll be someone who does what the red-haired devil did to Antonio Recio: jump on top of the grave to make sure he's well and truly dead and buried. Anyone who has watched La que se avecina has that image burned into their memory, and bringing it into a song about one's own death strikes me as deliciously cruel.
But under the joke lies a fairly serious idea: in two weeks everything is the past and it'll be as if you had never existed. That's the real sorrow of the song, not death itself, but being forgotten so quickly.
The ending has a realism that hurts and makes you laugh at the same time. Someone will ask why he said such a thing back in the day, and someone else will answer, playing it down: he had his temper, he was surely drunk, or very high. That's exactly how we sum up those who leave when we never quite understood them.
I'd dedicate it to you if you've ever felt like the odd one out in your family or your group. Listen to it on a Sunday afternoon, the kind that invites you to think about what you leave behind, and laugh a little at your own burial before your turn comes.
The full lyrics are below. Listen on Spotify
Lyrics · Nadie Hablará De Mí Cuando Haya Muerto
Dos amigos, como mucho,tal vez uno.Familia de sangre:mi madre, mi padre,mi última pareja...
Hasta que, al final, y con razón, él también se aleja.Mi último novio, y los que dirán:"El que se creía un genio".
El cura que quiere dar la extremaunción,y mi despedida, a malas, con la iglesia:echando al cura de casa,acusándole de pederasta, de abusador.Se irá muy serio.
Nadie hablará de mí cuando haya muerto,y habrá algunos que harán como el demonio pelirrojocon Antonio Recio:
Saltar encima de mi tumbapara comprobar que estoy bien muerto y enterrado.
Y en dos semanas eso es pasado,eso ya está vivido,y será como si nunca hubieras existido.
Nadie hablará de mí cuando haya muerto.Nadie hablará de mí cuando haya muerto.
Y dirán:"Ya sabes, tenía su carácter".Y contestarán a la pregunta:"¿Por qué me diría eso?""No te preocupes,seguro que iba borracho,o tal vez muy puesto".
Nadie hablará de mí cuando haya muerto.
Lyrics as published with the official music video, on the MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS label.