Tim: Mr Scott, I have two versions of this song for you. There is the radio edit, which comes comes with some lovely strings and a triumphant fanfare, or the club edit, which has an airhorn and wonderful chiming bells. Which would you like?
Tom: Well, I’ll put the radio edit in – it’s got the chiming bells too – but the club edit is here, if our reader prefers.
Tim: Music: lovely, because it’s all about that chorus, with the one word repeated heavily so that we all know what the song’s about (sort of – see below), but it’s the music behind it that really plays a blinder here, and it works well in both versions. Whether it’s the bells, or the strings and the fanfare, it always sounds wonderful (though I could happily leave the airhorn out of it).
Tom: Why does this sound like a discount version of the Killers to me?
Tim: I don’t know, because it doesn’t at all to me.
Tom: I’m not sure why – I think it’s the choice of instrumentation and the vaguely anthemic sound. I don’t mean that to seem like an insult: it’s just that the Killers do this thing so well that it’s hard not to sound a bit like an own-brand knockoff. It’s still a pretty damn good track.
Tim: As for the words and meaning, since you were a bit snarky last week about my not doing lyric research, I checked these out with Google Translate and everything, although there’s a slight issue (just slight) in that Google doesn’t know what ‘sambofet’ itself means.
Tom: Ah, now that I can translate myself. “Sambo” is a term that means simply ‘living together but not married’ – there’s no simpler direct translation in English that doesn’t have some subtext attached to it. And “fet” is, well, “fat”. Translated literally, it’s the weight you put on when you’re in a relationship.
Tim: Well, that sounds about right, because the rest of it is along those lines – “sure, he’s fit and exercising and doing Thai boxing at the moment, but that’s because he’s young and single – just you wait until he’s older when he’ll be drinking beer, playing on his PlayStation and piling on the relationship fat”.
Tom: It’s basically a pledge from Eric to continue keeping fit until he has a heart attack, which is lovely. Not sure whether you could insert it into a pre-nup, though.
Tim: I’m sure someone in California has tried.
Tom: In short: music that’s wonderful and lyrics that are fun but not legally binding.