“Ghosts”
Album: fantasmas (ghosts), 2023
About: Soft melancholy pop with mariachi and folk elements. A song of nostalgia, grief, and pain that pulls into the abyss. A serenade to saudade. Trigger warning for dark thoughts of wanting to join the ghosts.
Country: Mexico
Listen: YouTube
Lyrics Translation:
Del gran sueño
No me quiero despertar,
Y me falla
Un poco más mi realidad.
From this great dream,
I don’t want to wake,
And it fails me
A bit more, my reality.
Aún los llevo
Pasando por la yugular,
Y el recuerdo
Se convierte temporal.
I carry them still
Passing by my jugular,
And the memory
Becomes fleeting.
En esta casa no existen fantasmas,
Son puros recuerdos,
De tiempos ajenos,
De buenos momentos.
In this house, there are no ghosts,
They are purely memories,
Of faraway times,
Of good moments.
En el cielo volaban los buitres
Que auguran deceso,
El fin de los tiempos,
Nos hacemos eternos.
In the sky flew the vultures
Who heralded death,
The end of times,
We make ourselves eternal.
[Musical interlude]
Tantas fotos llenando los marcos,
Mi propio museo.
No hay muchos trofeos,
Con ustedes, tengo.
So many photos filling these frames,
My own museum.
There are not many trophies,
(But) with you all, I have them.
Y aunque te lleve en la sangre
Me duele sentirte tan lejos.
Destellas el cielo
Y ahora te celebro.
And though I carry you in my blood,
It pains me to feel you so far away.
You make the sky sparkle
And now I celebrate you.
Lo sigo intentando,
Tan cerca el impacto,
Hay que ser bien fuertes
Pa’ ver a la muerte
Derecho y honrado.
I continue trying it,
So close (still) the impact,
One must be very strong
To face death
Standing straight and honorably.
Cansa’o de pensarlo, oh
No puedo evitarlo,
Quiero estar juntitos,
Tomarme contigo un último trago,
Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh~
(Un último trago)
Tired of thinking of it, oh
I can’t avoid it,
I want to be right next to you,
To drink my last drink with you,
Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh~
(A last drink)
Ya viví lo que pude vivir.
Perdón que me tenga que ir
En la noche, conquisto el silencio,
Y la ausencia del ruido genera un vacío.
I have lived what I could live.
Apologies that I need to leave
By night, the silence won out,
And the absence of noise creates a void.
Perdón que me tenga que ir,
Perdón que me tenga que ir,
Oh, oh, oh, oh-oh-oh-oh~
Apologies that I have to leave,
Apologies that I have to leave,
Oh, oh, oh, oh-oh-oh-oh~
En esta casa no existen fantasmas
Son puros recuerdos
Son mil sentimientos
De lo que vivimos
Cuando tú estabas aquí.
In this house there are no ghosts,
They are only memories,
They are a thousand feelings
Of what we lived through
When you were here.
Translation Notes:
Añoranza (f. noun) is a Spanish word that describes the melancholy or wistful nostalgia that comes from the absence of someone or something lost. Saudade is a similar word in Portuguese.
Del gran sueño
No me quiero despertar,
Y me falla
Un poco más mi realidad.
From this great dream,
I don’t want to wake,
And it fails me
A bit more, my reality.
This song is very much about nostalgia and longing. The primary interpretation of this song is that someone is daydreaming about how things used to be in the past and feeling a bit lost now in the present. They lost a loved one. They are looking at the empty house that they need to leave behind, remembering the good times, and trying to come to terms with the end of an era.
I searched for interviews and this is what the band, Humbe, says about this song:
‘fantasmas’ no es simplemente una canción, es el puente entre lo tangible y lo intangible, una melodía que nos recuerda que, aunque la vida sea efímera, los recuerdos son eternos.
RollingStone en Español, Nov 17, 2023, Humbe interview with Patricia Guerrero
Translation: “ghosts” is not just a song, it is the bridge between the tangile and intangible, a melody that reminds us that, though life is ephemeral, memories are eternal.
Aún los llevo
Pasando por la yugular,
Y el recuerdo
Se convierte temporal.
I carry them still
Passing by my jugular,
And the memory
Becomes fleeting/stormy/temporary.
The memories of their loved one are part of them, flowing through their blood (including the essential jugular vein). Using the word yugular (jugular) specifically is meant to evoke sudden emotion. “Going for the jugular” is a phrase to describe an attack intended to kill. Here, it describes sudden grief, not possible to ignore, an emotional attack. It isn’t a physical attack, though, and gradually the narrator is learning to let those feeling of grief pass by.
En esta casa no existen fantasmas,
Son puros recuerdos,
De tiempos ajenos,
De buenos momentos.
In this house, there are no ghosts,
They are purely memories,
Of faraway times,
Of good moments.
The narrator is accepting that their loved one is really gone. They are learning to let them go and instead appreciate the memories they had together.
En el cielo volaban los buitres…
Nos hacemos eternos.
In the sky flew the vultures…
We make ourselves eternal.
Death comes for everyone. The vultures were always there in the sky, signifying what would come. However, before death, the living are able to make memories and affect the world, leave behind their impact on others, and thereby gain a type of immortality.
Y aunque te lleve en la sangre
Me duele sentirte tan lejos.
Destellas el cielo
Y ahora te celebro.
And though I carry you in my blood,
It pains me to feel you so far away.
You make the sky sparkle
And now I celebrate you.
Acceptance of death does not fully make the grief go away. The narrator still misses their loved one, even though they treasure the memories. Their loved one is like stars in the sky, bright and beautiful, but distant. It still makes them sad, but they are learning to cope.
Hay que ser bien fuertes
Pa’ [para] ver a la muerte
Derecho y honrado.
One must be very strong
To face death
Standing straight and honorably.
One must be very strong
To see Death
While standing upright and honorably.
The narrator is saying this to themselves to strengthen their spirit. They don’t want to be a crumpled mess of sorrow on the floor. They need to be resilient and remain on their feet, alive and ready to face life until the natural end.
Cansa’o [cansado] de pensarlo, oh
No puedo evitarlo,
Quiero estar juntitos,
Tomarme contigo un último trago,
Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh~
(Un último trago)
Tired of thinking of it, oh
I can’t avoid it,
I want to be right next to you,
To drink my last drink with you,
Oh-oh, oh-oh-oh~
(A last drink)
Here, the narrator is admitting their dark thoughts. They can’t help but consider suicide due to their grief. They are tired of battling these dark thoughts that keep creeping back. This goes back to the previous stanza about memories passing through their jugular: the thoughts feel so intense and dangerous.
Ya viví lo que pude vivir.
Perdón que me tenga que ir
En la noche, conquisto el silencio,
Y la ausencia del ruido genera un vacío.
I have lived what I could live.
Apologies that I need to leave
By night, the silence won out,
And the absence of noise creates a void.
The narrator is imaging their goodbye. They plan to say sorry for leaving abruptly, explain that they have lived enough, and explain that the silence of their absent loved one was too much. They plan to do it at night when the silence feels worse. They phrase their goodbye so poetically and politely, attempting to romanticize what they know will horrify others.
They think that if they apologize for it, others will understand. We won’t. We will feel sad! Speaking as someone who has lost friends to suicide, please hold out until the thoughts lose their intensity. Ask for help. If you are in the USA, dial 988 for the hotline. Call or text friends and family, or even aquaintances. If an aquaintance that I wasn’t very close to reached out to me in crisis, I would not mind, honestly. I prefer they call than disappear.
En esta casa no existen fantasmas
Son puros recuerdos
Son mil sentimientos
De lo que vivimos
Cuando tú estabas aquí.
In this house there are no ghosts,
They are only memories,
They are a thousand feelings
Of what we lived through
When you were here.
The song ends ambiguously but I think optimistically. Repeating that the house has no ghosts indicates that the narrator is okay. They are still surrounded by memories, still grieving, but the dark thoughts are abating.
Be well, dear website visitors! Take care of yourselves.
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Songlations 
Oh my. What an outstanding piece of music. I just found this gift of your translation. Thank you so much ! You have no idea how much I appreciate your work . So Well done!
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I am glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for commenting.
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I appreciate the in-depth analysis of the meaning of this song. However, the take that the singer is contemplating suicide I think is ill-gotten. I the line “en la noche, conquisto el silencio” the verb conquistar is in the present tense first person. So it reads like “at night, I beat/defeat/won out over the silence”. If you re-listen to that part you can tell that the emphasis is on the second syllable and not the last which helps to differentiate from the past tense third person form conquistó.
As for my personal take, I think the vocalizations at the end of the second verse are an introduction to another POV. I think the bridge is sung from the point of view of the decedent and it’s the writers rationalization that their loved one didn’t want to leave but they lived all they could live. They won out over the silence in the night (maybe they passed in their sleep) and the silence they leave behind creates a void.
As you return to the point of view of the living that silence is felt almost like ghosts in the home, but they’re not ghosts but memories. Those memories are what live on in their absence.
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