Cadillac solitario
by Loquillo y Los Trogloditas
How to study this song
Learning “Cadillac solitario” means 64 entries at A2 — 25 Spanish words, 11 adjectives and 28 verb forms, every one taken from what the song actually says. The glossary is the place to begin — día, ciudad and mar are the song’s keywords. This one leans on its verbs: 28 distinct forms against 11 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| día | day (m.) | giorno | jour | dia | dag | Tag |
| ciudad |
Adjectives
| ES | EN | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| viejo | old (m.) | vecchio | vieux | velho | oud | alt |
| segunda |
Verb forms
| ES | EN | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| quise ir | I wanted to go (preterite) | volli andare, ho voluto andare | j’ai voulu aller | quis ir | ik wilde gaan | ich wollte gehen |
What this song teaches you
Level · A2
- Vocabulary words
- 25
- Adjectives
- 11
- Word combos
- 14
- Expressions
- 13
- Verb forms
- 28
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«Cadillac solitario» is a song by Loquillo y Trogloditas, a rock band from Barcelona. It was written by Sabino Méndez, the group’s guitarist and main songwriter, and it first appeared in 1983 on the album «El ritmo del garage», where it is the fourth track. The studio recording runs for about three and a half minutes (the Spanish Wikipedia gives 3:35).
Loquillo is the stage name of the singer José María Sanz Beltrán. According to the Spanish Wikipedia, the Trogloditas came together in 1983 in the Catalan town of Vic, where Méndez found three musicians who fitted his idea of a band: the guitarist Ricard Puigdomènech, the drummer Jordi Vila and the bass player Josep Simón. The album was recorded in only five days, from 18 to 22 April 1983, at the Doublewtronics studios in Madrid, and it was released by the independent label Tres Cipreses. Several names from the Madrid scene of those years appear as guests, among them Alaska and Ana Curra.
Méndez was nineteen when he wrote the song. He said so in an interview published by Metrópoli Abierta in December 2018, where he also explained that the real car was a SEAT 600, the small family car of Spain in the 1960s; in the words it became a big American one because, as he put it, a writer always ends up giving a lyric an epic touch. The Spanish Wikipedia quotes him on the music too: he wanted a mixture of Roy Orbison, Don McLean, The Clash and Bruce Springsteen, and what came out was closer to Willy DeVille with neighbourhood punks.
The words describe one night. A man is sitting in a used American car parked on the side of Tibidabo, the hill that looks down on Barcelona, next to a bar called Merbeyé. Years before, he dreamed of leaving for California with a woman who has since left him. A girl who was with him has just gone, a drink brings the memories back, and he admits that he has not forgotten his old love as easily as he expected. He supposes that the morning will find him asleep in the car, while people tell him that she now leads a serious life. For a learner the song is a compact lesson in the present perfect with reflexive verbs, the future and the future perfect, two irregular preterites and the structure «volver a» plus infinitive.