Viva la Vida
by Coldplay
How to study this song
The card for “Viva la Vida” is built from 86 study entries at B2: 39 English words, 11 adjectives and 36 verb forms. Begin with world, seas and word: get those and most of the lines stop being guesswork. This one leans on its verbs: 36 distinct forms against 11 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the words on their own are not the problem — it is the way they are put together that takes the work.
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
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| world | mundo | mondo | monde | mundo | wereld | Welt |
Adjectives
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| alone | solo | solo | seul | sozinho | alleen | allein |
Verb forms
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| used to rule | antes gobernaba | governavo | je gouvernais | eu governava | ik heerste vroeger | ich herrschte früher |
What this song teaches you
Level · B2
- Vocabulary words
- 39
- Adjectives
- 11
- Word combos
- 9
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 36
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«Viva la Vida» is the title track and second single of «Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends», the fourth studio album by Coldplay, released in June 2008. The single came out on 25 May 2008, a few weeks before the album, and it quickly became the most successful song the band had ever recorded. It was produced by Brian Eno together with Markus Dravs, Rik Simpson and Jon Hopkins, a team that pushed the group away from the guitar-and-piano sound of their earlier records towards something more orchestral and more colourful.
The title is Spanish and means «long live life». Chris Martin took it from the last painting by the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, a still life of watermelons that she inscribed with those words shortly before her death in 1954. Martin saw the painting during a visit to the Frida Kahlo museum in Mexico and was struck by the idea of an artist who had suffered so much celebrating life at the very end. The Spanish words never appear in the lyric itself; they work as a frame for the whole song.
The lyric is told by a king who has lost his throne. He remembers a time when everything obeyed him and contrasts it with his present life as an ordinary man on the streets of the city he once controlled. Along the way he mixes images from very different periods of history — Roman soldiers, church bells in Jerusalem, missionaries abroad, a crowd waiting for revolution — so the king is not any real ruler but a symbol of power that seemed permanent and turned out to be fragile. The last verses add a religious fear: the narrator suspects that he will not be welcomed into heaven.
Musically the song is built on a repeating pattern played by a string section, arranged by the violinist Davide Rossi, over a steady, march-like beat, with timpani, a digitally processed piano and the sound of a church bell. There is almost no lead guitar, which was unusual for Coldplay at the time. That combination of a simple chord pattern with a large, ceremonial sound is what made the chorus so easy for stadium crowds to sing, and it is why the song is still heard at football grounds and concerts all over the world.
Did you know?
The song is a good lesson in two ways English talks about the past. «Used to» describes a habit or a situation that is no longer true, and «would» plus a verb can also describe repeated actions in the past, not only conditions. Speakers of Romance languages usually cover both with a single past tense, the imperfect.