A (not so) brief reflection on Rosalia's song "Berghain"
Hello, my angelzz! (I don't know who I'm talking to, I don't have any followers... let's ignore that). As a HUGE fan of Rosalía's latest album, I thought it would be interesting to share my thoughts on one of her songs (Berghain) with the English-speaking community. Hope you enjoy it and PLEASE listen to this song, it will heal you.
TW: sex mentioned in the lyrics of the song, with a violent tone.
N/A: probably multiple grammar/spelling mistakes as english isn't my first language. its pretty long. sorry if some parts are difficult to understand/messy. i know that many people may not interpret the lyrics in the same way as me, but reminder that im not trying to discover the truth hidden between Rosalia’s song, instead, i’m just presenting how *I* personally view it.
NOW PLAYING: Berghain｡𖦹°‧ Rosalía ft. Björk & Yves Tumor.
⤵ .ılılılllıılılıllllıılılllıllı. 0:24 ─●──────── -2:58 ↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
ROSALÍA, Björk, Yves Tumor · LUX · Song · 2025
[Chorus]
His fear is my fear
His rage is my rage
His love is my love
His blood is my blood
[Verse 1: ROSALÍA]
The flame penetrates my brain
Like a lead teddy bear
I keep many things in my heart
That's why my heart is so heavy
[Chorus]
His fear is my fear
His rage is my rage
His love is my love
His blood is my blood
1 🪽 Here, the narrator expresses how her way of loving and dealing with negative situations in her daily life is by merging with the rest, showing a devoted character that associates the message with a romantic relationship. The beginning, the soundtrack and that chorus are repeated throughout the song like a mantra and a lifestyle that the narrator has imposed on herself. After the chorus, the protagonist shows us how this lifestyle affects her mind: she shows us how this flame of feelings remains in her mind, the leaden stuffed animal a metaphor for the apparent tenderness she shows, but which is so heavy inside that it could explode at the slightest movement. The weight of her heart reinforces the message of the things the protagonist carries with her (and which, in theory, do not belong to her; her heart is filled with things that are not hers).
[Verse 2: ROSALÍA]
I know very well what
I am tenderness for coffee
I'm just a sugar cube
I know that heat melts me
I know how to disappear
When you come, that's when I leave
2 🪽This is by far my favourite part of the song, probably what made me sit down here and start writing this post. Oh Rosalía, how I love you.
The protagonist is aware of who she is and of the changes she can bring about in her environment due to her sensitivity: tenderness for coffee. In a bitter environment, she is sweetness. In this individualistic world, she is more tender and vulnerable.
Oh, and this part is the best. ‘I'm just a sugar cube. I know the heat melts me. I know how to disappear. When you come, that's when I leave.’ The narrator shows us a slightly darker side of being tender and vulnerable: that sweetness makes her lose herself in the other person. Her brightness gets lost in the darkness of coffee, consumed by it. In love, in warmth, she chooses to lose herself in the essence of her beloved. Love melts our protagonist, and that makes her capable of preventing emotional pain and entering a state of emotional dissociation: she knows how to disappear. The last sentence reinforces this message, explaining that it is precisely the presence of a lover that makes her enter into this disconnection with herself.
[Chorus: Björk]
His fear is my fear
His rage is my rage (This is divine intervention)
His love is my love
His blood is my blood
[Bridge: Björk]
The only way to save us is through divine intervention
The only way I will be saved (Is through) divine intervention
3 🪽 (We see how the mantra repeats itself!) Here, an attempt is made to see some hope (BEWARE: or despair. Both go hand in hand.), demonstrating this through divine intervention. No clear solution is found to the problems of merging with the rest, but she does not seem to want to give up: she decides to entrust this situation to something far removed from earthly existence. Maybe something ethereal, heavenly, divine, could save her.
[Outro: Yves Tumor]
I'll fuck you 'til you love me
I'll fuck you 'til you love me
I'll fuck you 'til you love me 'Til you love me 'Til you love me 'Til you love me 'Til you love me 'Til you love me Love me 'Til you, 'til you love me I'll fuck you 'til you love me I'll fuck you 'til you love me Love me Love me Love me Love me
4 🪽 This part is the one that has been perceived as the most uncomfortable throughout the song. My first reaction when I heard it was the same; I didn't quite understand what I was listening to. But now it's also one of my favourite parts of the song, and I think the artistry and beauty of the melody's ending is precisely the uncomfortable feeling it creates.
The violence and roughness felt in this fragment is undeniable. It's as if we can see the face of the person with whom the narrator has merged, the coffee that has melted that sugar cube and its bitterness into its darkness. The ethereal feeling created by the previous melody is cut short, and any trace of innocence, tenderness or delicacy is erased. It moves to a completely physical plane, carnal desires and earthly whims, leaving the listener with a feeling of loss and confusion: it somehow replicates the constant state of emotional dissociation in which our protagonist lives. One of loss, confusion, of not knowing exactly what you are doing. And to have a song provoke that feeling… that is art. It is made to make you uncomfortable, and that is what makes it a beautiful fragment.
Been meaning to make this point. 🧠💡 Ned Flanders himself was never "flanderized". This character became more extreme in his beliefs as a reflection of a shift in middle-class Christian identity we were seeing in the real world. Ned started out a well-meaning milquetoast man who naively rubbed his success and contentment in Homer's face. And we can talk about inconsistent characterization of Flanders, because there's been plenty of that across the seasons, but the general trend has been that as the cracks in the façade of the American dream he represented became more pronounced, that naivety turned into a willful ignorance that could be malicious. Around seasons 7-11, "The Simpsons" became (rightfully) vocally concerned about the Fox Network spreading propaganda and manipulating people, and because even in the first seasons it's not like it would have been out of character for someone like Ned to watch Pat Robertson, Flanders was selected to display what zealotry can twist a person into. As his wife dies, his neighbors repeatedly fail him, and he's humiliated for his convictions, he doubles down, retreats into his beliefs, and begins to credulously rely on any desperate strategy to protect his sons. In a way, that's the story of what happened to a lot of real people in the 2000's.
I get WHY this character was used as the poster child for this trope, but it's always just sort of rubbed me the wrong way, y'know? Like what does it say about us, that we're so perplexed by social commentary about religion flattening a person into a cliché, that the name becomes a shorthand synonymous with lazy character writing?
some half-baked thoughts on introducing Korean pop music into the Korean curriculum.
I don’t know the precise moment it hit me. Maybe it was my umpteenth night staying up doing “homework” until 2AM, pun intended, as an excuse to marathon another round of favorites from 2NE1, Girls Generation and friends. Maybe it was the morning after in another Korean Lit class, as I stabbed myself in the leg with my sharpest pencil as our teacher fed us ten more things to underline. The way I see it, though, it was probably the very moment before I was about to succumb to my exhaustion when the same teacher drifted to a different topic: Korean pop stars.
“You can memorize all of these morons’ songs and dances, so why can’t you memorize this poem?” he roared. I realized he was right, but not in the way he intended. I have to confess that I’ve learned more as a consumer and analyst of pop music than I’ve learned from most of my actual classes. And based off of my experiences, I’d like to propose that students and teachers in Korea begin to bring pop music (and maybe even pop culture) into the classroom—because I think it’d do all of us a lot of good.
The first reason is engagement. It goes without saying that it’s difficult to get students pumped up about learning. Take literature, for instance. Literature education in Korea basically amounts to a laundry list of antiquated poems and novels we’re expected to be acquainted with; not only is this curriculum boring, it’s also counterproductive. It limits the scope of what students are encouraged to know while avoiding or outright discouraging an analytical approach to texts; it also suggests that only works preordained as important matter and completely dismisses the works that most directly impact and influence students’ lives. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we should throw our textbooks out the window and base our classes off of YouTube’s Top 100, and I’m not arguing that we should. Rather, I’d like to see a focus on classic material enhanced with one on the everyday. If discussing something like “Gee,” something students will not only be more familiar with but also be more enthusiastic about, can help them sharpen analytical and technical skills, what’s stopping teachers from trying?
Some would argue that pop music is too insubstantial to be worth studying. I beg to differ; if anything, it’s because it’s relevant that we must learn to study it. Any work of art has merit because all works of art consist of choices made by artists, and discussing these choices and the implications they have, we have a standard by which to evaluate the significance of any story, song, or film. Furthermore, pop culture is a reflection of the society in which it is created and can be studied from a variety of different perspectives. 2NE1’s music opens up dialogues about feminism, hip-hop culture, and even cultural appropriation (as evidenced by a recent controversy in which member Dara was criticized for wearing a bindi, an important Hindu symbol, in the “Falling In Love” music video); PSY’s subversion of Korean economic and cultural norms offers potential for discussion of his technique and his motive; some could even argue that Sistar’s woeful ballads provide insight into how han, a traditional Korean characteristic, operates in a modern industrial society, just to give a more academically-minded example. As insipid as these songs may sound when we’re trying to tune them out on the radio, they’re just as part of the Korean culture as more highly-esteemed works of literature or history are, and students need to be able to apply the same skills they’ll apply on their exams to things outside the classroom.
On a final note, this argument could easily be applied to a number of other aspects of pop culture (television, film, and pop fiction, to name a few) but music is likely the easiest place to begin. It surrounds us every waking moment of our lives, blaring in our classrooms during lunchtime, in the bus on our way home, and in the streets where stores blare it 24/7. We don’t think about it as often as we should when it has such a grip on us. And maybe it’s time we start, if for no other reason than the fact that I might die from lead poisoning if I have to stab myself one more time.
Sometimes I'm a bad guy, but I still do good things. Ironically, those good things are often a direct extension of my badness. And this makes me even worse, because it means my sinister nature is making people unknowingly smile.
