Today Rosalía’s first song of 2023 is published, the bilingual LLYLM, an acronym for Lie like you love me (Lie to me as if you loved me). A topic that she had already been talking about since she published a fragment, quickly deleted, on Tik Tok in early January, while she was taking a boat ride with her boyfriend Rauw Alejandro in Japan.
As soon as the song starts, it already raises the question in Spanish: “the one I want, doesn’t love me/how I want him to love me” which, like the title of the single, can refer to a great moment in cinema, starring Joan Crawford, in the western Johnny Guitar (1954), when the male ‘partenaire’, Sterling Hayden, tells him: “Lie to me. Tell me that you still love me, as I love you.
There is also a famous tongue twister from popular culture that says “as you want me to love you, if the one I want to love me does not love me as I want him to love me”. She adapts it, to finish off with “today the sentence ends” and add in Spanglish ‘maybe you are the one who frees me’. She then talks about “that today is carnival”, something logical when it is an upcoming festivity in which costumes prevail, and in a certain way the lie or the false, which allows one to get into the skin of another person. Not in vain the lyrics include the stanzas, again in Spanglish: “to be and change/or not to be and disguise/your angel, you’re my vamp tonight”
At another point, she says “I’m wearing coconut, with scented cinnamon” which may be a nod to her boyfriend since there is a cocktail with coconut, the coquito, very popular in Puerto Rico. He also mentions a “flower bracelet” which in traditional Indian culture means a bracelet to seal a union.
To justify the inclusion of Shakespeare’s language, he says “I’m from here and you’re from there/I’ll ??say it in English and you’ll understand me, mmh”. And in the very catchy chorus he repeats: “I don’t need honesty/baby, lie like you love me, lie like you love me/cover me in a dream/I’ll ??be yours or fantasy/who needs the honesty?/ baby, lie like you love me, lie like you love me/maybe at the end, it becomes real enough for me yours or fantasy/who needs honesty?/baby, lie to me like you love me, lie to me like you love me/maybe in the end, it becomes real enough for me)”.
Between the apparent and the reality runs an electronic urban pop in which the beat of flamenco beats, a style that, after a timely silence, emerges in all its splendor, in a song whose popularity will increase, since it is expected to be included in the promotional campaign for a famous soft sugary drink.
