Like many, I got to know the song thanks to Paralmas do Sucesso version in the early 1990's and also their clip. But when I heard this
version many years later and noticed how dark it was, compared with the cover, something intrigued me, conquered me and I end up hearing the full
album by Fito Páez, "Ciudade de pobres corazones". How is it possible that one particular song with same lyrics (different in language but nearly
similar) could have different outcomes, meaning, ways of expression through its sound? If Paralamas brings a soulful, hopeful and enthusiastic
shout to life, with Fito we have a cry and a despair where everything feels wrong and "Dá-me tu amor, solo tu amor" ("Give me your love, only your love")
goes as a desperate plea for love amidst the problems, one last fire burning: to find hope. Yet, despite the differences, both version work in a spectacular manner.
I don't need to go about how that dark and edgy 1987 album came out and the horrible tragedy that happened in Fito Páez life that brought to a major shift in his sounds and lyrics. But please, do listen to that album, it's amazing. The promotional video made for "Track-Track" is very basic while selling a man trapped into an insane world. It goes in a repetitive manner where Páez appears performing the song while clutching himself on a fence; him holding a strecher on a mental institution with a corridor that seems to go on forever, on top of that stretche he appears on a TV (that previous image), and only at the end we have a break from those patterns as we see the man performing with his band.
As a great mind said "Make your pain and turn it into art" and I think Fito did that, he really immersed himself with everything going around him, pain, agony and rage and threw it all into a mix that reflected his hurt, possibly questioning his own sanity. If the imagery of it all looks confusing, chaotic, ugly and very dark with its blue tones everywhere, there's reasons for it. He fights with the fence while singing, and he carries the stretcher, at times helped and other times all by himself to the point of vomiting in one shot, and it repeats over and over while small changes. The inner chaos of living in a violent place that repeats itself time and again, in a suffocating manner, that the few sane minds can only think, cry and plea for just a little love, something to make them going on living. This video captures the spirit of its lyrics, the feeling of it all without borrowing its elements from it. It's perfect, and the song is quite unique, memorable, hearfelt and the sounds of everything conquer very easily. Latin America at its greatest. 9/10.
I don't need to go about how that dark and edgy 1987 album came out and the horrible tragedy that happened in Fito Páez life that brought to a major shift in his sounds and lyrics. But please, do listen to that album, it's amazing. The promotional video made for "Track-Track" is very basic while selling a man trapped into an insane world. It goes in a repetitive manner where Páez appears performing the song while clutching himself on a fence; him holding a strecher on a mental institution with a corridor that seems to go on forever, on top of that stretche he appears on a TV (that previous image), and only at the end we have a break from those patterns as we see the man performing with his band.
As a great mind said "Make your pain and turn it into art" and I think Fito did that, he really immersed himself with everything going around him, pain, agony and rage and threw it all into a mix that reflected his hurt, possibly questioning his own sanity. If the imagery of it all looks confusing, chaotic, ugly and very dark with its blue tones everywhere, there's reasons for it. He fights with the fence while singing, and he carries the stretcher, at times helped and other times all by himself to the point of vomiting in one shot, and it repeats over and over while small changes. The inner chaos of living in a violent place that repeats itself time and again, in a suffocating manner, that the few sane minds can only think, cry and plea for just a little love, something to make them going on living. This video captures the spirit of its lyrics, the feeling of it all without borrowing its elements from it. It's perfect, and the song is quite unique, memorable, hearfelt and the sounds of everything conquer very easily. Latin America at its greatest. 9/10.