Great Dane is, of course, not the Spanish word for dog. What does it mean to you?
Well, it’s a bit self-explanatory; it’s a female dog. I didn’t think about this until yesterday, when I got a comment that said, “Te amo, perra,” but it’s much nicer than “bitch” or “perra.” But I didn’t mean it that way at all. I think it’s a strong word, and I like the fact that it’s made up — there are a few made-up words in this record.
On ”one is tree”, Great Dane’s opening track, the lyrics repeat themselves until their sound becomes more relevant than their semantic meaning.
That song came as is. I started to sing and say “uno es árbol,” so it was already written, which never happens. I’m never that lucky. You can’t really say “one is tree,” and it’s the same oddity in Spanish, but I think that’s why it works.
What’s a “desarbol”?
I don’t know. It doesn’t exist. It’s an un-tree, and it came like that. I was possessed by something.
“siestas ahí” is such a perfect, pillowy love song. Did you know you had something special with that one right away?
We were so happy and so excited about it. [Co-producer Emelio Haro] was like, “This is the best song ever!” He loved it so much that he took it with him and worked on his own. I said, “What are you doing without me?!” But then he came back with lots of great ideas, and we became more and more obsessed.
The only thing that made me sad was that he really pushed me to write lyrics for it. I said, “I want this song with no lyrics, as it is right now. I think it’s perfect.” And he said, “No, please, Juana. This song needs lyrics.” Finally I wrote some lyrics and it was fine, but I got depressed. I was missing all that ethereal, floating nonsense. So one day, when the song was finished, walking like a cow [to slaughter]I said, “No! Let’s keep the nonsense [along with the lyrics].” And he said, “Yes! This is a good idea.” So the first verse is the way I sang it for the first time, and the second verse has lyrics. Once it came back to its origins, starting with those nonsense words, I felt at peace with the song.
The lyrics anchor the songs, like balloons that are attached to a branch so they don’t go away. That’s why I love the parts where the record is completely abstract, where it has no lyrics at all, where I’m traveling with the sounds and everything’s taking me. Then comes the live show, and it gets more difficult to sing because I’m not in that state anymore, singing whatever comes to my mind. I don’t know if I feel like singing those particular nonsense words [from the record]and I’m not sure I’m gonna have the same inspiration to make up those sounds every night.
