Here’s What Happens When You Run 2018’s Best Lyrics Through Google Translate
“Which dog bed? Remember! Mayo on bread."
Between Drake’s rap rants about Instagram, Courtney Barnett’s sardonic lyricism, and the Arctic Monkeys’ trip-tacular album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, 2018 has had its spate of memorable lyrics.
The worst part of a lovely (or bizarre, or funny) lyric, though, has to be that they never quite hit you the same when you hear them outside of the song. Quoting lines almost always brings back memories of MSN Messenger screen-names, even if you’ve moved on from mid-2000s pop-punk.
For literally no reason — maybe in aim of reducing the cringe factor — we thought we’d spend most of the morning plugging some of 2018’s top-notch lyrics into Google Translate, shifting them to Latin and then back to English. There’s probably some joke here about how we’re canonising these lyrics with the likes of Homer, Virgil and old mate Ovid, but look, let’s just get down to the business: Et ludos incipere.
‘Star Treatment’, Arctic Monkeys
The opening line to the Arctic Monkey’s divisive sixth album Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino spurned think-pieces before we’d even heard the song. Originally conceived as a placeholder lyric, the line stuck as lead singer Alex Turner liked how it captured the rapid pace of the past 12 years since the band’s debut album was released. While Google has lost the Julian Casablancas reference, it’s gone for a Jack Kerouac vibe. Same difference.
Original lyric: “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes/Now look at the mess you made me make”
Translated lyric: “I just want to be one of the Beat/Now look at you and made you eat.”
‘She Bad’, Cardi B
How do you pick a single Cardi B lyric? When her debut album Invasion Of Privacy dropped earlier this year, it felt like a slight on all rap to realise it had taken ’till 2018 to hear the line “Bout my coins like Mario”.
While they might not be her most ‘iconic’, these lines from ‘She Bad’ captures a lot that we love about her. Google has made a few controversial suggestions here, upgrading twerking from a dance to a Holy Proper Noun, while Church becomes an item of clothing. The missionaries do not approve.
Original lyric: “Write a verse while I twerk, I wear Off-White at church/Prolly make the preacher sweat, read the Bible, Jesus wept”
Translated lyric: “When I wrote a verse in the Twerk, wore white and the church/Prolly let’s sweat, the missionaries said ‘Jesus!'”
‘Nameless, Faceless’, Courtney Barnett
On her sophomore album Tell Me How You Really Feel, Courtney Barnett takes aim at both self-doubt and a world that shuts her down. ‘Nameless, Faceless’ — a track we called one of 2018’s best so far — is perhaps her most arresting, a rally against violence against women and anonymous trolls. In this line, she quotes one hater directly and decimates him with a real ‘yeah, nah’ of a line. Google takes her trademark casual cleverness out of the mix, and we’re left with something resembling how Virginia Woolf might have responded to her trolls.
Original lyric: “He said ‘I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup/And spit out better words than you’/But you didn’t”
Translated lyric: “And he said, ‘I do not understand: from the letters, I have been able to eat the bowl of pottage./He spit out more of yourself’/But you did not”.
‘BlackJack’, CupcakKe
Nobody can beat CupcakKe when it comes to sexual obscenity. Whether it’s a caption on selfies or a verse about oral sex, she’s in a league of her own — ‘BlackJack’, a recent standalone single, is testament.
After waiting ’till a boy is 21 (geddit?), CupcakKe runs us through her deck of moves, telling him he’ll “cum quick like Amazon Prime” and that “the dick like Ariana ponytail cause I swear that shit was the longest”. For the above line, Google transformed CupkKake’s lurid imagery into a stream-of-consciousness that wouldn’t be out of place in As I Lay Dying.
Original lyric: “He a dog in the bed/Think mayo on bread/How I spread my legs (open me up)/Bring flowers instead/Cause when I’m done, the twat should be dead, casket”
Translated lyric: “Which dog bed? Remember! Mayo on bread. How to stretch my legs? (I open) To bring flowers. When I was done, twat. Dead shrine!”
‘Emotionless’, Drake
While we’ll never forgive Drake for sampling one of Mariah Carey’s best songs to talk about about How Fake Instagram Is, at least its proved to be one of the more memorable parts of an otherwise forgettable album. We’re big fans of what the translator did here — it’s pretty non-sensical, but that’s for the best.
Original lyric: “I know a girl whose one goal was to visit Rome/Then she finally got to Rome/And all she did was post pictures for people at home/’Cause all that mattered was impressin’ everybody she’s known”
Translated lyric: “One thing I know, the purpose of a city was Rome to call upon a young lady to whom/Then she finally got to Rome/And after all that, the house for pictures/I’d impressin’ report, the cause is not known”
‘High Horse’, Kacey Musgraves
Another one of our favourite tracks of 2018 so far, this highlight from country-pop crossover Kacey Musgraves’ Lonely Weekend is a perfect ‘fuck you’ to the no-fun figure in your life. Google got a little confused with this one — or maybe someone over on the translate team really just hates Stephen Colbert.
Original lyric: “So, why don’t you giddy up, giddy up/And ride straight out of this town/You and your high horse”
Translated lyric: “In this way, that they are not they are light/as far as Stephen Colbert/The straight, they are borne of the town/Are the high horse”
‘Nobody’, Mitski
This is immensely good.
Original lyric: “Nobody, nobody, nobody/Nobody, nobody/Ooh, nobody, nobody, nobody”
Translated lyric: “No one, no one, no one/ no one, no one/Hui, no one, no one, nothing, no one, there is no”
‘Missing You’, Robyn
We’ve already written about how Robyn’s comeback proves her songs speak to heartbreak unlike any other, and Google’s translation proves it’s pretty universal. Would it be weird if we got this as a tattoo?
Original lyric: “There’s this empty space you left behind/Now you’re not here with me/I keep digging through our waste of time/But the picture’s incomplete”
Translated lyric: “This left a void/Did you have here with me?/Digging through too much — and keep/But the picture is incomplete”
Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee, and he can’t wait to submit this to the Walkleys. Follow him on Twitter.