Rolling Stone has posted this new song by Lykke Li entitled ‘Du är den ende’ (‘You Are the Only’), that she recorded for the soundtrack of Tarik Saleh’s new crime thriller ‘Tommy’. I immediately listened to it and thought,… wait a minute,… I definitively knew that song! Strangely, Rolling Stone described the melancholic song as a ‘slow, creeping waltz with Lykke Li singing smokily in her native Swedish over a tense spread of strings, tremolo guitars and glockenspiels’,… sure but not a word about what this song is? It’s certainly not an original, or at least it’s extremely close to an old classic, probably one of the first piece of music that many guitarists learn to play when they practice.
I have posted both songs below and you just have to compare. Lykke Li’s ‘new’ song is the theme called ‘Romance’ and allegedly composed by Spanish guitarist Narciso Yepes at a very young age, but no I don’t want to sound pedantic suddenly! I actually knew the song because it is the soundtrack of an old black and white French movie, ‘Forbidden Games’, directed by René Clément. Did this escape Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, COS, and Stereogum? Nobody is mentioning it but I don’t think I am hallucinating. The theme really is an oldie (1952) and so this ignorance could be understandable if it wasn’t such a classic for French people and the rest of the world! The film won a Special Award as Best Foreign Language in the US, plus other prices.
Sure, Lykke Li’s voice brings another dimension to the track, the version is also slowed down compared to the Spanish guitar interpretation and Li gives a fragile emotion to the music even though we don’t understand a word of what she says! It is only a bit difficult for me to truly appreciate the song for what it is because this melody is loaded with the memory of this deeply touching movie – if you haven’t seen it I highly recommend it. To be honest, I didn’t expect to hear Lykke Li singing the theme of ‘Jeux Interdits’, and it could have sounded totally cheesy but it is not at all.