Nathy Peluso has released her second album this year, ‘Grasa’, which she presented first with the single ‘Aprender a amar’, with a 100% Kanye West sound, and then with a film that brings together video clips for each and every one of the tracks included in the album. In the ‘Grasa’ film we see Peluso interpret the songs from the album alone (‘Legendario’, ‘Envidia’) or with her collaborators (‘Manhattan’ with Duki, ‘Todo roto’ with CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso).
Although Nathy Peluso does not appear anywhere in some of the ‘Grasa’ videos, this is the case of one of the hidden gems of the album, ‘El día que perdí mi juventud’, today’s Song of the Day.
‘The Day I Lost My Youth’ brings together Peluso with Blood Orange, one of the essential artists of alternative pop of the last decade. ‘Champagne Baby’, ‘You’re Not Good Enough’ or ‘Charcoal Baby’ are among his greatest hits. Under his given name, Devonté Hynes, he has worked on productions of the calibre of ‘Losing You’ by Solange or ‘Everything is Embarassing’ by Sky Ferreira.
However, ‘The Day I Lost My Youth’ is unlike any of those songs, as it features an acoustic form. Blood Orange plays guitar on ‘The Day I Lost My Youth’ and presumably also the keyboard/organ which comes in around minute 0.50. Nathy, on the other hand, delivers one of her most tender and nostalgic compositions, a song openly dedicated to this concept – that of nostalgia – from its very title, which is a bit misleading. Nathy is not talking about ‘youth’ exactly, but about innocence. She misses her naivety, the feeling of believing that the world is wonderful and not cruel.
In an interview with Los 40 Principales, Peluso has explained the meaning of ‘El día que perdí mi juventud’: «It goes beyond being something literal, it is a song that I had to write because one realises the loss of innocence, naivety and drive. When you live certain experiences repeatedly, you start to be more mental; situations that were once magical, now burn you. I hope to be able to recover that innocence from when one is still very much a virgin in life.»
In the lyrics, Peluso revisits her childhood memories, fantasizes about a “machine” that would give her back her lost innocence, even an “injection,” and even visits her old school, but realizes that it is not as she remembered it. Somehow, when she sings “I dreamed that I was a girl and that I was flying / and playing I was hiding in the crowd,” she reconnects with that Nathy Peluso of the past. At the end of the song, she invokes the return of her innocence with a “prophecy.”
Over floating acoustic guitar chords, Nathy Peluso builds a beautiful melody in ‘El día que perdí mi juventud’, full of that innocence that she regrets having lost, but also of a disarming nostalgia. ‘Solo se trata de vivir’ (1982), the classic by Litto Nebbia, seems an obvious reference in melody and chords, and ‘El día que perdí mi juventud’ is a song worthy of such inspiration.
