I'm sure at some point on the internet most of you have ran across this song before. I first ran across it in the
flash animation on Newgrounds. Through the magic of the internet,
Gary Brolsma shares a video of him singing this song, and bam! he gets featured on ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's The Tonight Show and VH1's Best Week Ever and gets interviewed for the New York Times.
While the video is entertaining, I don't think it's "TV" good. It's sort of flogging a dead horse to point out that this isn't news....internet fads are never news...ever.
On the other hand, the song (
Dragostea Din Tei) preformed by a Moldovan Pop band called O-Zone is a very catchy song. The thing is, I didn't even really know there was a place called
the Republic of Moldova, not to mention that they have a funky political system with both a president and a prime minister, and their own one hit wonder pop bands who also style themselves after misspelled English words ('N Sync I'm looking at you.)
For the most part, the lyrics, once translated to english, aren't terribly exciting. For example:
Hello? Hi! It's me, an outlaw
and please accept my love, happiness.
Hello? Hello! It's me, Picasso.
I gave you a call and I am tough
but I want you to know I ask nothing from you.
On the other hand, the part of the chorus that the song is named after won't get out of my head.
You want to leave but
you can't, you can't take me;
you can't, you can't take me;
you can't, you can't, you can't take me.
The image of your face
And the love of the linden tree
Remind me of your eyes.
I guess the title of the song roughly translates to "Love from the Linden Trees"... which didn't mean much to me, until I went back to wikipedia and figured out what a
linden tree was. Turns out the linden, or lime tree, is the national symbol of a whole bunch of countries that start with
Slov and end in
ia. (well, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic). However, before it was a national symbol, it was seen as a symbol of
Freyja, the Norse goddess of love, beauty, sex, and attraction, but also a goddess of war, death, magic, prophecies and wealth.
It is said whenever Freyja rides her cat driven chariot to a battle, she gets to keep half the dead men, while Odin gets the other half.
Now I'm not saying there is any more symbolism than the obvious intended in the Numa Numa song, but the idea of Linden trees and all those Freyja associations has sort of stuck in my head.
By now my evil plan has worked, and some of you must have clicked the links above, and got this song firmly stuck in your heads. It's been in my head for two weeks... I've woken up in the morning singing it...
It's saving grace is that "Dragostea Din Tei" has a great ring to it. Not that I can actually pronounce it, but it sure rolls itself off the practiced Moldavian tongue.
