Primeiros Erros (Chove)
by Capital Inicial
- Language
- Portuguese
- Released
- 2000
- Genre
- pop rock
- Level
- A1+
- Difficulty score
- 421
- Duration
- 4:04
How to study this song
“Primeiros Erros (Chove)” carries 12 Portuguese words, 5 adjectives and 19 verb forms — 36 study entries in all, graded A1+. Begin with caminho and manhã: get those and most of the lines stop being guesswork. This one leans on its verbs: 19 distinct forms against 5 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
| PT | EN | ES | IT | FR | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| caminho | path, way | camino | cammino | chemin | weg | Weg |
Adjectives
| PT | EN | ES | IT | FR | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| inteiro | whole, entire | entero | intero | entier | heel | ganz, vollständig |
This card holds 4 more adjectives. You meet them when you play the song.
Verb forms
| PT | EN | ES | IT | FR | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| é | is | es | è | est | is | ist |
What this song teaches you
Level · A1+
- Vocabulary words
- 12
- Adjectives
- 5
- Word combos
- 7
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 19
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«Primeiros Erros (Chove)» has two lives, fifteen years apart. It was written by Kiko Zambianchi, a guitarist and singer from Ribeirão Preto, in the interior of São Paulo state, who moved to the city of São Paulo at twenty-three and was signed by EMI within a month. The song appeared on his album «Choque» in 1985, as a new wave single of about three and a half minutes, and it did well on the radio, especially on São Paulo’s 97 FM, even though the record company did little to promote it. It was born during a lonely period in which Zambianchi was suffering from panic attacks, and that background explains a lot about its tone.
The version on this card is the one most Brazilians know today. In 2000 the rock band Capital Inicial, formed in Brasília in 1982, was trying to rebuild its career. The group had grown out of Aborto Elétrico, the early punk band of Renato Russo, and had been one of the names of Brazilian rock in the 1980s, but sales fell at the end of that decade, and in 1993 the singer Dinho Ouro Preto left to go solo. The four original members got back together in March 1998. Two years later MTV Brasil invited them to record an unplugged concert, and the band asked Kiko Zambianchi to join them on stage.
The concert was recorded on 21 March 2000 at the Teatro Mars, in the Bela Vista district of São Paulo, and released on 26 May 2000 as «Acústico MTV: Capital Inicial», on CD, VHS and DVD. It was produced by Marcelo Sussekind and directed for video by Rodrigo Carelli. Zambianchi did not appear only on his own song: he played acoustic guitar and sang backing vocals throughout the show. «Primeiros Erros (Chove)» is the eighth of fourteen tracks and features Zambianchi, in a new arrangement that runs for about four minutes. The singer Zélia Duncan was the other guest, on a different track.
The words are sung in the first person by someone who does not want to be found. The first verse is a small declaration of independence: the singer’s road starts again every morning, his future belongs to no one, and he asks the listener not to try to trace him. Then the song turns into a wish. Using a chain of «if» clauses, he imagines being able to see his whole past at once and stop the rain that falls on his earliest mistakes; if that were possible, body and mind would turn into sunlight. The chorus answers the wish with plain reality: it just keeps raining. The rain is never explained, and that is part of why so many listeners have read their own regrets into it.