Voy a olvidarme de ti, even if it costs me my life

Forgetting someone by decree. That's the idea, and also the trap, of «Voy a olvidarme de ti» (I'm Going to Forget You): a promise repeated so many times that it ends up giving away the opposite.

The lyrics work like a list of impossible tasks. Forgetting an «I love you» overnight. Putting out a fire that burns inside. Forgetting the desire and the smell of a pillow. Cutting a rose that wounds with its thorn. Each verse proposes a concrete, almost domestic gesture, and repeats it like someone saying it to the mirror until they believe it.

That repetition is pure copla. The lines come back two and three times, and with each return they weigh a little more. I like how the ends of the verses keep bouncing on a single repeated word, as in «condena, condena» ("sentence, sentence"), like a heart that always snags in the same place.

The chorus puts the cards on the table. Forget even if it costs my life, even if I have to suffer, even if I lose the game. No victory is promised, there's a decision. For me that's where the beauty is, because the song doesn't pretend forgetting is easy or quick, only that it's needed.

There's jealousy too, treacherous eyes that stab like daggers and a love described as punishment. Classic images, the kind that came out of the radio in Andalusian courtyards, used here to tell something very current: leaving a relationship that hurts you even though it still pulls at you. That «aunque me muera de gana'» ("even if I'm dying to"), with the s swallowed Andalusian-style, seems to me the most honest thing in the whole lyric.

I'd dedicate it to anyone deleting their ex's number for the third time this week. And to anyone who's already managed it and wants to remember how much it hurt.

Ideal moment: a Sunday night, with the window open and the phone face down. Or on the way to return the things that stayed at his place.

The full lyrics are below. Listen on Spotify