Historias de amor
by OBK
How to study this song
Learning “Historias de amor” means 38 entries at A1+ — 13 Spanish words, 4 adjectives and 21 verb forms, every one taken from what the song actually says. Start with the glossary: historias and amor come up again and again, so they are the ones to know first. This one leans on its verbs: 21 distinct forms against 4 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| ES | EN | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| historias | stories | storie | histoires | histórias | verhalen | Geschichten |
Adjectives
| ES | EN | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| imposibles | impossible | impossibili | impossibles | impossíveis | onmogelijk | unmöglich |
This card holds 3 more adjectives. You meet them when you play the song.
Verb forms
| ES | EN | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| miran | they look | guardano | ils regardent | olham | ze kijken | sie schauen |
What this song teaches you
Level · A1+
- Vocabulary words
- 13
- Adjectives
- 4
- Word combos
- 8
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 21
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«Historias de amor» is the song most listeners in Spain still connect with OBK, the synth-pop duo formed by Jordi Sánchez and Miguel Arjona in the Barcelona area. The two had met as teenagers at an athletics club in Sant Feliu de Llobregat in the early 1980s, and what kept them together beyond sport was a shared devotion to British electronic pop: Depeche Mode, Yazoo and OMD. Their first project was called Oberkorn, after an instrumental by Depeche Mode, and when they signed a record deal the name was shortened to three letters.
The track belongs to «Llámalo sueño», the debut record the duo released in 1991 on the Barcelona label Blanco y Negro Music, a company closely tied to the dance and club scene of the time. It was issued as a single in 1992 and soon became the calling card of the whole album. Musically it is a compact piece of synth-pop of about three and a half minutes: a steady electronic beat, bright keyboard lines and a chorus designed to be sung by a whole room, carried by Sánchez’s clear and slightly melancholic voice.
The story it tells is simple: a love that refuses to fade. The singer looks back on moments shared by a couple and insists that nothing can wipe them away. In the first verse he regrets promises that were never kept, wishes he could prove how sincere his feelings are and rejects the idea that forgetting someone is easy. The second verse moves to the present: he wakes up with the memory of the other person’s kisses, feels that person living inside him and confesses he cannot imagine carrying on alone. The chorus keeps returning to the image of eyes full of hope.
For a learner, that repetition is an advantage. The song works with a small and clear vocabulary — nouns such as eyes, passions, promises, kisses and voices — and with a handful of very useful structures: the imperfect subjunctive after «si» to express a wish that is out of reach, the subjunctive in a negative command, the present perfect with «volver a» to say that something happens once more, and an adjective followed by «de» and an infinitive to say what cannot be done.
Did you know?
The name OBK is an abbreviation of «Oberkorn (It’s a Small Town)», an instrumental that Depeche Mode put on the B-side of their 1982 single «The Meaning of Love». Oberkorn is a small town in Luxembourg.