Hello, after my post last week about the first song I ever used to learn Spanish, I know your ear needs a little break.

Now, this classic 80’s ENGLISH song, by the late Laura Branigan, titled, “self-control” is one of my favorites. But just like my first Spanish song I spoke about in Last week’s blog post, and many others, I didn’t understand most of the words. I just understood certain words and mumbled the rest.

I know you’re probably thinking, “how can a song be a favorite of yours when you don’t even understand half the words?”

You see, it’s not just Spanish songs we have trouble with and don’t understand much, but it can still be a favorite when we only understand 10% of what’s being said in the song.

I always heard this song as a child growing up in Grenada in the 80s –Yep, I know it’s not exactly anything the typical Caribbean boy would listen, right?

Fast forward to 2002, I heard it again in a video game I purchased. A game called, “Grand Theft auto: Vice City”.

This game allowed you to listen to classic 80s music while driving around a fictional 80s Miami causing mayhem.

By the way, this video-game gave me the inspiration to use music and sound effects in scenes of Gritty Spanish. Part of the charm and craziness you hear in Gritty Spanish came from the love I had for the game.

When creating Gritty Spanish original, I had some voice overs for 2-3 of the scenes, listened to them, and said to myself, “Something is missing, I need to do something else to bring them to life“.

You always learn new weird things about where my head was at when I got started with Gritty Spanish, right?

When I first started playing the game, the “self-control” track was one of the first tunes I heard and it took me way back! It was pure nostalgia when the main character got into one of those cars.

The other night, I was up late working on somethings, and part of the song’s lyrics came to mind, “I, I live among the creatures of the night”, which translates to, “Yo, vivo entre las criaturas de la noche”.

I looked up the lyrics since I didn’t know it too well and said, “You know what? I think my Gritty Subscribers/Customers will probably really enjoy this and use it for Spanish learning if they also get the Spanish translation” …

I know the words are not in Spanish, but just think of it as a really short book that you can read in both Spanish and English 😊.