Oh my god. I haven’t written a blog post for over a month! I hope to get back into better habits again by writing this one.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this post about a singer who I like a lot: Arthur Pirozhkov! I noticed that, according to TopHit.ru, the top song for the week of October 29 – November 4, 2018 was Маячки by Юлианна Караулова but I have written about her before. If you’d like to, take a look at that post here.
If she’s still #1 next week, maybe we’ll take a look at that song but Чика (Chika) by Артур Пирожков (Arthur Pirozhkov) is #2 this week and I have never written about him before on this blog so I wanted to take the opportunity this time.
According to Wikipedia, Pirozhkov’s actual name is Aleksandr Revva and he is a stand-up comedian from Donetsk, Ukraine. Since 1995, he has participated in KVN comedy shows. His first music video as Arthur Pirozhkov is “Paradise” (Пэрэдайс) which came out in 2009.
The first of his songs that I heard were #КакЧелентано and Либо любовь which I enjoyed quite a lot. I always look forward to a new Arthur Pirozhkov videos because they’re ridiculous and fun. The music isn’t bad too. The thing that I like most about Arthur Pirozhkov is that he’s really similar to other pop acts like Gunther but also self-aware enough to make it even more funny.
New words for me from the lyrics
There are relatively few new words for me from the lyrics. Maybe that’s one reason why I enjoyed the song a lot even from the first few times listening to it. If you’d like to see the full lyrics, please follow this link! There are a lot of repeated lyrics and generally fewer words to this song, so it’s a nice way to get back into this blog. Anyway, on to what I learned:
Сапёр – sapper, bomb-defuser, mine-remover
This word is really similar to “sapper” which is a word I know in English (thank you Warcraft II), but the difference in pronunciation in Russian made me confused. Anyway, this word is actually in the very first line of the song: “Если ты секс-бомба, то я сапёр” which I interpret as: “If you’re a sex-bomb, I am a bomb-defuser.”
I guess he wants to seem like he’s in control. That’s what the song feels like it’s about in a lot of ways.
Толк – sense, brain, understanding
I found this word in the first line of the second part of the first verse. Here is the line: “Если веришь сказки, то будет толк!”. I think this is saying, “If you believe in fairy tales, then it makes sense!” The rest of this part of the verse has references to Little Red Riding Hood.
Прогнать (кого либо) – to send (someone) packing, to send (someone) away, to show (someone) the door
This word is at the end of the first verse: “Прогони меня”. I interpret this as basically saying, “Make me go away” or “Chase me off”. It’s something like that. I guess as he is the Big Bad Wolf in this story, she can chase him away if she wants.
Спелый – ripe, mature
To be honest, when I first heard this song, I thought he was saying “белая” which made not a lot of sense to me. This makes a lot more sense. In the first line of the chorus, it says, “Чика чика чика чика, ты спелая клубника”. We may as well keep the Spanish flavor in the translation and say, “Chika chika chika chika, you are a ripe strawberry”.
I want to say in English, we’d probably make it a simile and say “like a ripe strawberry” but whatever. My translation gets the point across. I am not actually translating the song. I am just translating enough to get a better understanding.
Глупышка – a silly girl, bimbo
Now, of course I know the word глупый or stupid in Russian, but I hadn’t encountered it as a noun. So, here we are! Anyway, this word appears in the second verse in the line: “Ну не будь глупышкой, скажи мне ‘да’” which I translate as “Now, don’t be silly, say ‘yes’”
I feel like this song is kind of making fun of certain types of men and women – mainly rich guys and the women who chase them. I could be reading way too much into it too. Who knows.
Review of the song and music video
Let me start by saying that I really enjoy this song! Also, the music video is great. One thing I like about Arthur Pirozhkov’s music in general is that he mixes sexy and silly together in such a great way. This song is a perfect example of that.
The lyrics are over the top. I think it’s great how he can’t even remember the girl’s name who he’s singing to on the way into the chorus yet in the chorus he can’t live without her. It’s ridiculous and I love it.
One other kind of funny thing is since my fiancee speaks Korean, she initially thought that the song had something to do with brushing your teeth because chika sounds a lot like a word people use to talk about that with kids. This lead us to play the song before bedtime for a while so we could brush our teeth.
Anyway, I also love some of the ridiculous things in the music video. For instance, all the paintings in his house have his face. The best one is, of course, the last one where both people in the picture have Pirozhkov’s face.
Also, the last part where Pirozhkov is like a matador with all the ladies is funny. The last girl, presumably Veronika, seemed to win by not seeming to care about the ring or the car. I think in general, that’s kind of a good message too – not to be materialistic.
Media Language Learning 