Le donne lo sanno
by Ligabue
How to study this song
“Le donne lo sanno” carries 14 Italian words, 5 adjectives and 23 verb forms — 42 study entries in all, graded A2+. Start with the glossary: donne, cuore and testa come up again and again, so they are the ones to know first. This one leans on its verbs: 23 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
| IT | EN | ES | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| donne | women | mujeres | femmes | mulheres | vrouwen | Frauen |
Adjectives
| IT | EN | ES | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| prime | first (f. pl.) | primeras | premières | primeiras | eerste | erste (f. Pl.) |
This card holds 4 more adjectives. You meet them when you play the song.
Verb forms
| IT | EN | ES | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sanno | they know | saben | elles savent | sabem | zij weten | sie wissen |
What this song teaches you
Level · A2+
- Vocabulary words
- 14
- Adjectives
- 5
- Word combos
- 6
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 23
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«Le donne lo sanno» is one of the best known songs by Luciano Ligabue, the singer, writer and film director who has been the central figure of Italian rock since the early nineties. It was written by Ligabue himself and released as the third single from his eighth studio album, «Nome e cognome», in February 2006. The album had come out on 16 September 2005 on Warner Music Italy, and by the time this song reached the radio it had already produced two hits, «Il giorno dei giorni» and «L’amore conta». The record had been made between February and April 2005 at the Zoo Studio in Correggio, the small town in Emilia where Ligabue was born and where he still lives and works.
The subject of the song is stated plainly in its title, and the Italian encyclopaedia describes it as an explicit acknowledgement of the superiority of women over men: in stubbornness, in the ability to do many different things at once, and in the gentleness with which they think and act. The singer does not speak for women; he speaks as a man watching them and admitting, verse after verse, that they understood something first and that he did not. The refrain keeps returning to the same idea without ever naming what it is that women know, and that silence is the whole trick of the lyric: whatever it is, they have known it since always, and they know it before anybody else.
Around that idea the song builds a short portrait of very different women. There are the ones who can explain love, or at least try to pull an explanation out of you; there are the ones who are absent, and who know how to be absent in a way that hurts more; there are the ones who understand where a person comes from just by looking. In the bridge the perspective widens into something almost dark: women are described as familiar with the far edge of pleasure and the far edge of horror, and as knowing places and voices that the man listening will never reach. It is a compliment, but it is not a comfortable one.
Musically the track is straight alternative rock of four and a half minutes, built on the band Ligabue was touring with at the time: Federico Poggipollini and Niccolò Bossini on guitars, Antonio Righetti on bass, Fabrizio Simoncioni on keyboards and backing vocals, and Alessandro Lugli on drums. The production is credited to Fabrizio Barbacci, Luca Pernici and Ligabue. The arrangement grows in the repeated section, where the same lines are sung first with the verb for being able to and then with the verb for wanting to, so that a statement about what women can do turns into a statement about what women want. That single substitution is the emotional hinge of the song, and it is also the reason the track works so well live.