50 Special
by Lùnapop
How to study this song
The card for “50 Special” is built from 45 study entries at A1+: 21 Italian words, 7 adjectives and 17 verb forms. Start with the glossary: anni, centro and fuoco come up again and again, so they are the ones to know first. This one leans on its verbs: 17 distinct forms against 7 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| anni | years | años | années | anos | jaren | Jahre |
| centro |
Adjectives
| IT | EN | ES | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| truccate | souped-up, tuned (f. pl.) | trucadas | trafiquées | alteradas, kitadas | opgevoerd | frisiert, getunt |
Verb forms
| IT | EN | ES | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| girano | they ride around | dan vueltas, circulan | ils tournent, ils roulent | andam, circulam | ze rijden rond | sie fahren herum |
What this song teaches you
Level · A1+
- Vocabulary words
- 21
- Adjectives
- 7
- Word combos
- 14
- Expressions
- 12
- Verb forms
- 17
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«50 Special» is the debut single of Lùnapop, a pop rock band from Bologna, released on 27 May 1999 by the independent label Universo. Words and music are by the singer, Cesare Cremonini; Walter Mameli produced and arranged it. It runs about three and a half minutes and opened the way for the band’s only studio album, «...Squérez?», which came out on 30 November 1999.
The title names a scooter: the Vespa 50 Special, a small Piaggio model built from 1969 to 1982 that Italians could ride from the age of fourteen. In the song a teenager watches tuned-up, bright red scooters from the sixties buzzing through the town centre at speeds they were never built for, and asks for one of his own. With it, he says, the summer belongs to him: he can take a girl on holiday, ride over the hills around Bologna and feel as if his feet had wings, with every worry gone.
The second half is a small portrait of a boy at the end of school. His marks are bad and he has no girlfriend, but he has his scooter, Sunday has arrived, and the scooter will carry him out of town. Then he rushes out of his bedroom, runs up through the gears and asks for one quick ride before a party he is already late for. Nothing else happens, and that is the point: the song is about the feeling of leaving, not about arriving anywhere.
Cremonini wrote it shortly before his final school exams at the Sabin scientific high school in Bologna. Italian Wikipedia and Sky TG24 both say he was inspired by Enrico Brizzi’s novel «Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo», another story of Bologna teenagers on two wheels. He was nineteen when the single came out. For a learner the lyric is friendly: short lines, everyday words, the present tense almost throughout, one future form, and three imperatives with a pronoun attached, a pattern Italian uses all the time.
Did you know?
The band had been called Senza Filtro. In March 1999, with a new guitarist, it became Lùnapop: Cesare Cremonini (vocals, piano), Michele «Mike» Giuliani (electric guitar), Gabriele Gallassi (acoustic guitar), Nicola «Ballo» Balestri (bass) and Alessandro «Lillo» De Simone (drums).