- Michael M.: Too much going on. Life in flux, etc..
- Sunshine: Wow, I was soooo happy to see a new post in my rss reader. I was hopping this is already the comeback! :(...
- gandalf: Did you only get caffeine through Dr.p or did you drink coffee as well? I’m interested, since...
- neeka: nine kilos… wow… :) happy holidays to you, michael, and to all your loved ones! veronica
- m: It was a bargain. No strings attached.
Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
• AlienMelon
• Burger.si
• Heck
• Izklop
• si.blogs
• Sloblogi
• Blogorola
• Natalija Verboten
Slovenian playmate turned singer Sanja Grohar: “In my dreaming.”
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but for the record: If you are in a Slovenian band or performer and sing in English, I will gladly check your lyrics for free. Really. And I’m not picky or anything. I mean, the wonderful thing about English is that it’s tremendously flexible. But there’s a fine line between sounding creative and sounding like Borat, and a lot of Slovenian music acts skirt dangerously around this line.
Case in point: Sanja Grohar, a former Miss Slovenia who also appeared in a very NSFW Playboy pictorial. In the U.S., doing something like that inevitably results in you being stripped of your title, as was the case with Miss Teen USA 2003 (nsfw), and of course Miss America 1984. Recently, Miss Great Britain 2006 lost her titular privileges for pretty much the same reason. (again, nsfw)
Grohar, meanwhile, has released a single entitled “In my dreaming.” (Literally V mojem sanjanju, although the original title is Moje sanje.) Lyrically, it’s an awkward song; at one point it seems that she sings “My heart is beating for a medical sister” which is all different sorts of funny. (In Slovene, the word for “nurse” is medicinska sestra but you won’t find “medical sister” in a dictionary — only in poorly translated Soviet propaganda posters.) It’s hard to hear a lot of the lyrics, though. At one point I thought it might actually be “beating for medical assistance” which would also be very funny, but not as wrong.
Another awkward bit is “Jump in, and you will not regret” which urgently needs a direct object pronoun affixed to the end, namely “it.”
I should stress again that I’m not a grammar nazi; I just don’t get why people would put so much effort into a project without doing something as easy as having the lyrics checked. From what I understand, Ljubljana is crawling with lecherous Brits — do you really think it would be hard to find one willing to help out a young Playboy playmate?
In your dreamings!
(Thanks Martinovanje!)
Comments
Comments for this post are closed.
That’s just pathetic.
The lyrics are idiotic (and the grammar as well), she’s waiving those pretty hands of hers into the camera way too much and the background music is just…hmmm…how to put it… cheap. But I have to admit at least her accent is not as awful as I expected. 
Michael, I like your generous offer. Now we can only wish, they will accept it;)
Jagsemash?!
You are goddammright! Me think English is the poorest language in the world and kazahstan because it is tortured by every man in the world and kazahstan. Yes!
Well… if you go to her offical web page (well, i guess it is official), there is a link to this video…
Funny, i guess she is one of the first slovene “singers” that published her video on web space similar to YouTube etc… All the stuff that is included on her website, just a Playboy ceterfold “interview” is missing…
By the way Michael… i don’t get how does the “medical sister” fits into the lyrics… at least not slovene one…
It reminds me of bestselling British or American authors not bothering to have the simplest German quotes spell-checked. I never cease to wonder (and cringe)- it’s one of my pet hates.
Awful lyrics, attrocious translation, Latino-RnB rythm, suggestive hands movement … In short, I think this one is going to top the charts, hehe
matty: I listened to the Slovenian version and didn’t hear that part at all, which is a bit confusing.
therapist: I’ve noticed (and been annoyed by) that as well — there’s no real excuse for it in this glorious Google age we live in.
Bojana: One person has actually taken me up on it: I pre-listened to the Eurovision entry by Anžej Dežan. If you remember, they had to record a second song — and I quickly checked it while they were still in the studio. It took five minutes of listening and that was that. (There were no critical errors, luckily.)
What? A Slovene, having to doublecheck their English? Surely you jest. We’re so talented for foreign languages, any ten year old kid can speak at least three foreign languages fluently. In fact, I think a ten year old probably wrote those lyrics. There, that’s just how talented we are.
Seriously though, it’s not just the English lyrics. Some pop singers would have to have their Slovene lyrics proofread.
@Cornelius: I second that! But then again - a lot of British and US pop singers should have their lyrics just banned. Just take the song “We Built This City on Rock’n'roll”, which was rightfully declared the worst song ever by the Rolling Stone Magazine.
Well… i guess one of the worst lyrics is My humps from Black eyed peas…
““My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps.â€?”
This has got to be the least appealing description for the female anatomy every conceived. Indirectly comparing it to the camel (i guess only camels have humps on their body - or is it something to do with a hunchback???) makes it a winner…
Heh… according to wikipedia, “my humps” is repeated 55-times…
Ok, but i agree… that may not be an example of bad grammar, just an example of stupidity… And that didn’t stop the song going to second place on US Billboard 100 Pop Chart
Hehe, I’d put Spice Girls au general right there at the top. Maybe the BEP’s song really has an enviromental theme - you know: humpback whales….
@ Michael M. First of all - great blog. I’m a recent reader and loving it, definitely one of the best Slovenian blogs.
I don’t usually comment but today I had to. The English version of Sanja’s song is an embarrassement and the fact that this kind of lyrics are quite a common phenomenon in Slovenia is sad. I forwarded the link to this page to all my friends, hopefully it gets around to as many people as possible.
Keep up the good work!
Sunshine, my husband (an American) always finds it fascinating how I have absolutely no accent if I sing in English (I am Slovene). I think this is true for other non-native speakers in most cases, too. Hm.
Michael, I have to agree. I did music producing and recording back in the day, and there’s absolutely NO reason to do a simple proofread. This ‘in my dreaming’ thing is sad, but what can we do? It’s a playmate singing, afer all! =)
@Tina: I can distinctively remember Freedie Mercury singing with no apparent accent, but when he spoke, OMG, it was almost impossible to understand him. That’s called singing lessons, I guess
I’m sorry…but the video…uh…No comment. I won’t even mention the lyrics…
This song reminds me on Jan Plestenjak-Lolita(probably the same producer)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQeHMSPjVqA
Well that ‘My Humps’ song by B.E.P. is just gross. There’s a parody of it that came out around last Christmas, I blogged it. I wasn’t sure if it was blasphemy or just bad.
The original is one of those things that would have been totally banned in my house as just plain BAD.
I think it just shows how dedicated some of these performers, producers and label reps are to the current pop scene in Slovenia. “Why try harder if no one is complaining?”
Oh. What a cheap sub-sub-Shakira dirge. And what do lyrics actually mean? In my dreaming / this is beginning / of the story / we never forget… Some people would do ANYTHING for a rhyme (reason being optional, of course).
Borat could also learn some Kazakh… instead of using Polish (fortunately he realised Russian would be really too silly)
denis kak si kaj?
ful dober spot