Polina Gagarina – Obezoruzhena

Элджей continues to dominate the TopHit.ru charts, the subject of my last blog entry, Сергей Лазарев climbed up one spot to number 2 and Время и Стекло are holding strong at number 3. If you’d like to read about those songs, please click on those artists’ names to check out my other blog posts on them!

This week, I bring to you the number 4 song for the week of December 4th to December 10, 2017 which is Обезоружена (Obezoruzhena) by Полина Гагарина (Polina Gagarina). This has been a good year, I guess, for Ms. Gagarina as she has done well on the Russian music charts ever since I started blogging about music. This is my second blog post about one of her songs in 3 months!

If you like my introductions of the singers, I encourage you to visit my first blog post about Gagarina for her song “Драмы больше нет” that I wrote back in September. That song is a triumphant break-up song, which is a lot of fun.

This song is decidedly a different subject matter. It’s most certainly about being very much in love. The song doesn’t have an official video yet but, according to TopHit.ru, it was played on the radio 35,233 times and viewed on YouTube 226,946 times during that week (12/4 to 12/10). So, the YouTube link below isn’t official.

Also, I am still experimenting with the format, so I wanted to try something else again. Since I wanted a focus of this blog to be about learning vocabulary through media, I put my new words next and you can read my review at the end. Feedback would be great if you have an opinion.

Words I learned from the song

This song had quite a few unfamiliar words for me, which was a good learning opportunity! As usual, I was able to find the lyrics with a side-by-side translation done by a member of the community by visiting the Lyrics Translate website. Here they are:

Справиться – To manage, cope, pull off

When I saw this word in the lyrics of the song, I sort of knew because it has the word править as a root, which means “to correct” among other things. So, when it has the reflexive verb ending “ся”, I think “make myself right” or something.

Then I saw the line as it appears in the first verse: “Мне одной теперь не справиться” which can be translated as “I can’t manage (this) alone anymore”. I hesitate to say she’s talking about complete dependence on the subject of the song but maybe that feeling like you can’t live without the other person.

Тянуть – To pull, draw in, attract

This new vocabulary word appears in the pre-chorus right before the chorus starts: “Что к тебе тянет, будто магнитом / Ни для кого уже не секрет.” These lines together can be translated as “The thing that draws me to you like a magnet / Is no secret to anyone.”

A line like this is powerful in that it’s something that makes you very vulnerable if you say it. I like the sentiment.

Обезоружить – To disarm, put out of commission

This, of course, is the name of the song. Also, it’s the first line of the chorus: “Я обезоружена” which we can translate as “I am disarmed”. Actually, to go over how we can figure out what it means, we can look at the parts:

The prefix: “вез” is also a preposition meaning “without”. “Оружие” is Russian for “weapon”. So they have the combination of “without” + “weapon” + make it a verb. Knowing your roots and affixes really helps build your vocabulary!

Хрупкий – Brittle, fragile, frail, breakable

Уберечь – To save, protect, insure against

I put these two previously unknown words (for me) together because they are connected in the song. These lines appear together: Сердце, словно хрупкое стекло / Ты, пожалуйста, его убереги.” I translated these lines as “My heart is as fragile as glass / (You) Please protect it.”

I feel like this is a really relatable line in the song. People fall into and out of love. If you do it many times, it may feel very difficult.

Review

I will start with the negative stuff so I can end on a positive note. To be honest, I think it’s not a very interesting song in a musical sense.  One thing I noticed, which happens with a lot of bands and musicians, is a formula for how Polina Gagarina’s songs are written. I don’t know if she writes her own material or not but, after I heard the song for the third time, I decided to listen to “Драмы больше нет” again just to check my suspicions.

It turns out I was right. It has the exact same song structure. Now, as a musician myself, I have been guilty of formulaic song-writing and it’s something lot of people do and are quite successful. I noticed that both “Обезоружена” and “Драмы больше нет” have the following structure:

Verse -> Pre-chorus -> Chorus -> Verse -> Pre-chorus -> Chorus -> Softer chorus for a “bridge” -> Chorus

It’s a very standard structure and you can’t fault the song writer for it but it’s also not that interesting and I suspect this song won’t have much staying power. See if you can also hear it.

On the positive side, Polina Gagarina has an amazing voice. She’s a great singer and carries the song well. Also, I like the contrast between the verse and chorus parts of the song. The verse tended to be quieter and the chorus louder, which is also very predictable, but I think that difference in dynamics helped the song be more interesting and added energy.

Lastly, I think that the chorus is very fun to sing along to. It’s very emotional so you can do it sincerely or ironically at your pleasure.