MP3some: Revisiting Dungen

It's been about four years since Dungen released Ta Det Lugnt, and I still have no idea what those Swedes are saying. Not that it makes much of a difference - the record is still fantastic, and I can sing most of the songs phonetically by now, anyway. Nonetheless, I often find myself wondering what they're singing about.

A little over a year ago, a Swedish intern began working at my office. We became fast friends, and I decided to ask him about the band. I was a little disappointed that he had never heard of Dungen (the bulk of the music he listened to was either American or British club pop/rap), but he was nonetheless glad to help me roughly translate some of the lyrics. We got a few lines into "Festival" when I asked him to stop. The rough translation went along the lines of "Festival makes me happy every single day." I could stand to hear no more. Perhaps it was the quality of the translation, but I began to fear that knowing what the songs meant might ruin my appreciation of the record. Even with Dungen's words reduced to unintelligible sounds and syllables, I loved the music. Why mess with such a beautiful thing?

Well, curiosity got the better of me again today. I began looking online for lyrical translations, and managed to find a few scattered here and there. For example, according to a poster here, the chorus to "Panda" is roughly translated as "Not everyone has it as good as you/I think you understand because I like her, too/How she is/Sometimes she gets angry/She was mine, but I guess you don't give a shit." Now that wasn't so bad, was it?

The fact remains that Ta Det Lugnt was a masterpiece when it was released nearly four years ago. Given the fact that I'm still researching translations of the Swedish lyrics, I would say it's aged pretty well. Today's post is "Panda," the first track on the album, and one of the finest indie singles of the last five years. For those of you who have not yet heard it, you're in for a treat.