Corazón de Neón (part. Andrés Calamaro)

Joaquín Sabina's song "Corazón de Neón," featuring Andrés Calamaro, paints a vivid and paradoxical portrait of urban life. The lyrics describe a city that has grown with its back to the sky, symbolizing a disconnect from nature and perhaps a higher spiritual plane. This city is depicted as a map of loneliness, where newcomers are greeted with the sweet yet poisonous anxiety of modern life. Sabina's city is both a prison and a source of freedom, encapsulating the duality of urban existence.

The city is further personified as an ogre with golden teeth and a luxurious lover that Sabina has always wanted to seduce. This imagery suggests a love-hate relationship with the city, which brings together disparate elements like God and the devil, bureaucrats and transvestites. The city is a child longing for its end, a poignant metaphor for the self-destructive tendencies inherent in urban life. The repeated refrain of "corazón de cemento" and "corazón de hormigón" (heart of cement and concrete) underscores the city's cold, unfeeling nature, while "corazón de neón" (neon heart) highlights its artificial, flashy allure.

The song also describes the city as a seven-headed monster and a wounded bird wrapped in cellophane, further emphasizing its complexity and fragility. The city is likened to a massive beer barrel that could explode at any moment, symbolizing the potential for chaos and destruction. Despite its flaws, the city remains the center and the end of all things, a place where good and evil coexist in a delicate balance. Sabina's lyrics capture the essence of urban life, with its mix of beauty and ugliness, freedom and confinement, love and despair.