Songs of Love & Jealousy: The Emotional Rollercoaster of Polish Pop

4a.jpg, small, O, Ela! You’ve lost your boyfriend! (You were such a great girlfriend) (something something) – song about love, illustration: Olga Wróbel, Songs of Love & Jealousy:The Emotional Rollercoasterof Polish Pop

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In the first decade after Poland’s political transformation, which brought, among other things, a ‘new tradition’ of celebrating Valentine’s Day, Polish pop musicians offered interesting depictions of relationships. We look back on the bursts of passion, fears of separation, torments of jealousy and dreams of total affection from popular songs of the 1990s.

Exhausted men

We begin our review with the song O, Ela! by Chłopcy z Placu Broni (Boys from the Battlefield) from 1990, a monologue by a boy who catches his girlfriend, Ela, drinking wine on the porch with another man who’s wearing patent leather shoes and supposedly always hits the bull’s eye (at the shooting range). Offended by the betrayal, the lyrical speaker threatens the girl in the voice of Bogdan Lyszkiewicz, exclaiming that he’ll teach her a lesson for rejecting his love, and in accordance with his stated intent, he kills his rival with a switchblade he’d bought at a street market.

Subsequent narrators experiencing difficult emotions due to intense affection have acted less dramatically, perhaps with the exception of the lead singer of Ich troje (The Three of Them), who in 1997 proclaimed in a hoarse voice to his beloved that jealousy was driving him into such torment that he would prove his love by killing himself.

‘Come, let me show you what my love means!’ ‘Okay!’, illustration: Olga Wróbel

In Kazik’s 1991 song Spalam się (I’m Burning Up, from the album bearing the same title), he takes on the guise of a student who, like his classmates, is fascinated by his English teacher. The narrator has a slight edge over them because, while they are all imagining a rapprochement with the inaccessible teacher ‘in bathtubs and under bedsheets’, only he has the courage to look his chosen one straight in the eye. However, he’s probably defeated by the English tourists to whom the woman supposedly gives herself in exchange for money, and uttering this accusation is all he does to relieve his distress.

In Kazik’s case, ‘girls are just trouble’, even more so if he does get the better of his rivals. In the song Dziewczyny (Girls, also from the album I’m Burning Up), the following dangers lurk for the partner of a lady who is everyone’s object of desire: having beer poured in his shoes, getting beaten up next to a block of flats, paying jacked-up restaurant bills and having his car vandalised. In Baranek (Little Lamb) from Kult’s album Tata Kazika (Kazik’s Dad, 1993), with lyrics written by Kazimierz Staszewski’s father, Stanisław, the narrator goes on about how ‘dirty pigs’, ‘paranoids’ and ‘vile sadists’ talk about his girlfriend out of jealousy, saying that she’s an addict, meets other men and ‘washes floors’ on a yacht on the Côte d’Azur. He, on the other hand, tries to see her idyllically and innocently as the Girl from Forefathers Eve Part II (Dziady), wearing a garland and shepherding a little lamb.

The extent of love’s tormenting perturbations was most clearly expressed in Marcin Świetlicki’s poem Nieprzysiadalność (Not Participating), recorded in 1995 on Świetlicki’s first album, Ogród koncentracyjny (Concentration Garden). The narrator, recreating a moment from the poet’s biography (as confirmed by Świetlicki himself during an interview with Rafał Księżyk published in 2017 by Wydawnictwo Literackie), is sitting in a pub at a time when he’s had an argument with one partner and becoming attached to the next one, between one difficult conversation and another. So he turns down a drunken colleague (modelled on Jerzy Pilch) who is not yet going home and invites him to join two women who are giving them encouraging signals. The message ‘I’m not in the mood’ (nie mam ochoty) appears in several variants in Polish, becoming a multi-generational cult phrase.

Two years later, Świetlicki’s revered band Pidżama Porno ambitiously tried to describe the emotional state of a complicated relationship. Kasia Nosowska sang Krzysztof Grabowski’s lyrics from Stąpając po niepewnym gruncie (Walking on Thin Ice): ‘Though someone else is sleeping by your side, and it’s not you who wakes me up in the morning’. Unfortunately, this interpretively interesting situation was reacted to with a banal description:

When a permanent seventh heaven bursts within us

I’m no longer in control of my senses

My eyes are the eyes of a madman

When they meet your eyes.

The message is similar to that of the leading boy band Just 5’s Kolorowe sny (Colourful Dreams), also from 1997, in which the performers were assembled in a casting call, stylized to look like the group Take That: ‘Colourful dreams, when I touch you / Crazy world, when desire dances in us’.

Resourceful women

‘He said he was doing it for me…’, illustration: Olga Wróbel

The fact that love is linked to violent and ambiguous emotional states was also sung about by women, but instead of helplessness and exhaustion, they proposed more pragmatic solutions. Bold appropriating fantasies related to jealousy were addressed in the lyrics of Zazdrość (Jealousy) from the 1993 album Fire: as the lead singer of Hey, Katarzyna Nosowska sang that she would like to kill her chosen one, deprive him of his sight or at least lock him in a symbolic cage so that he wouldn’t have any contact with other women. Female power was warned against by Varius Manx with Anita Lipnicka in 1994 in the lyrics to Zanim zrozumiesz (Before You Understand) from the album Emu. In it, the third-person narrator warns the man that he’ll have to stop the woman he’d abandoned from making use of a knife, whereas she will certainly not take him back (even if he buys red wine) but will soon find another partner.

In Piosenka księżycowa (Moonlight Song) from this same album, the narrator is depicted in an inverted, male role: just after having intimacy, she comforts and puts to sleep her crying lover, who has for some reason stopped trusting her. The reason is not mentioned in the lyrics but is depicted in the video: a handsome photographer is taking sensual photos of Anita Lipnicka while her partner lies on a piece of wood set up in the middle of the hall or walks around with a sullen look in his eyes. The narrator also displays traditionally masculine protective qualities, announcing, ‘one day I’ll find us a house with a big window looking out onto the world’.

Agnieszka Chylińska was equally enterprising as the singer of O.N.A., when in 1996, in the song Kiedy powiem sobie dość (When I Tell Myself Enough), she clearly declared that she would be the one to decide when the relationship was over and would, with no hard feelings, be able to realistically acknowledge the glories and shadows of an ending relationship.

The theme of putting her partner to sleep was taken up a few years later by Kayah, who sang with Goran Bregović in 1999 that she would run away from her man under the cover of darkness because she felt that love for him was taking away her freedom (Śpij, kochanie, śpij [Sleep, Darling, Sleep]).

Vague deifications

‘O, how happy we’d be if I didn’t love you at all!’ ‘You might have a point…’, illustration: Olga Wróbel

Among softer and less clear emotional registers is the attitude of the narrator of a hit song by Kobranocka (1990), a resident of Włocławek, who sang to his addressee, with whom the relationship did not work out for reasons unknown, that he loved her ‘like Ireland’. In Pocisk miłości (Bullet of Love) in 1991, Muniek Staszczyk with T.Love detailed the physiological symptoms of a surge of passion but suggested a loss of contact with reality in the process: ‘words and thoughts jump out of their orbits’. ‘The cosmic night’s magical depths’, however, did not allow the narrator to say anything specific about the circumstances in which his feelings arose or about his chosen one.

The object of his affections was outlined more precisely a year earlier by the band Lady Pank: Jan Borysewicz sang in Zawsze tam gdzie ty (Where You Are, I’ll Be) that the meaning of his life consisted in returning to his beloved ‘every golden night’ and always being where she was. In 1992, Robert Gawliński of the band Wilki (Wolves), in his first album, also titled Wilki, made his woman into a goddess whose departure was tantamount to apocalypse and death (the song Eli Lama Sabachtani).

Equally high expectations towards women, albeit in the area of physical love, were exhibited by the narrator of Perfect’s song Kołysanka dla nieznajomej (Lullaby for a Stranger) in 1994. He urged the addressee to fully take the initiative and dedicate herself to her meeting with him; she should abandon ‘the world of mechanical toys’ and other entertainments of 1990s pop culture (i.e. not listen to telephone horoscopes or read the press) in favour of spontaneous intimacy. The idea would be that she would come to him barefoot, say on the threshold that she desired him and, without asking if such an arrangement made sense, listen to her body – thanks to this, the narrator promised in the voice of Grzegorz Markowski, she would understand what she was living for. On top of this, she would be so emotionally moved that she’d cry and laugh ‘like the moon in my window’. Following this pattern, Andrzej Piaseczny also shifted the responsibility for the further fate of the relationship to his partner, imploring her in his 1996 song Imię deszczu (Name of the Rain) to ‘stay, because like nobody you bring me air’.

‘Come to me barefoot, laugh and cry like the moon in my window …’ ‘Oh, and maybe you want me to dance over a precipice as well? No thanks’, illustration: Olga Wróbel

A year later, Artur Rojek of Myslovitz, in Scenariusz dla moich sąsiadów (Scenario for My Neighbours), made his artistic plans contingent on the return of his girlfriend – he claimed that only then would he be able to finish the script for a film that would cure the ‘sick dreams of my neighbours’. It is worth mentioning that this song from the album Z rozmyślań przy śniadaniu (From Meditations Over Breakfast) features perhaps the most mysterious stylistic figure since 1988, when Formacja Nieżywych Schabuff (Formation of Non-Living Porkchops), in a song with the refrain ‘I’d like to’ (Chciałabym), gave us the quizzical riddle of what a sparrowhawk with a briefcase can do in a bedroom situation. As the narrator of Scenariusz (Scenario) is eating a sandwich, a ‘great friend’, who turns out to be a ‘sick man’, flies out of the sky.

It’s interesting that in the same year Paweł Kukiz and his band Piersi (Breasts) proposed a surprisingly simple deal to his chosen one against this backdrop: his addressee would kiss him (Całuj mnie [Kiss Me]) in exchange for material goods acquired during his 5-year stay in the United States. Most likely, however, Kukiz was merely resuscitating the sentimental patterns of a previous era – in 1997, gifts from America were no longer likely to be a convincing argument for a female resident of a country with unhindered access to all manner of goods on the free market.

Like a movie

Women in Polish songs don’t have an easy life. ‘I’m fed up with sleeping at this shaman’s feet…’, illustration: Olga Wróbel

The second half of the 1990s brought about Polish versions of Western entertainment genres. Films taking up the gangster romance convention appeared on the big screen, such as Jarosław Żamojda’s Młode wilki (Young Wolves, 1996) and Maciej Ślesicki’s Sara (1997). In 1994, Klan began airing as the first domestic soap opera that followed the earlier popularity of long-running Brazilian TV series and the US series Dynasty and The Bold and the Beautiful. In 1999, viewers watched the first episode of the series Na dobre i na złe (For Better or for Worse), the Polish answer to ER. The Polish transcription of these models – aspirational portrayals of a wealthy middle-class lifestyle and the love of a resourceful bad boy and an innocent girl – may have resulted in singers returning to the traditional roles of pretty women who depend for their happiness on a man’s behaviour.

In 1995, on her debut studio album, Dotyk (Touch), Edyta Górniak assured us that she was not Eve, that is, she had not yet sinned, and she was waiting like a blank page to experience great love. She declared her purpose in the words of Jacek Cygan: ‘I’m here to love you’. In the same year, Kasia Kowalska promoted her second album, Koncert inaczej (A Different Kind of Concert), with the song A to, co mam (What I Have), where she admitted her uncritical fascination with a man, her readiness to submit to his decisions and her great fear of rejection. In 1997, singing Im więcej ciebie, tym mniej (The More of You, the Less), Natalia Kukulska’s narrator confided that on dates she experiences in advance a longing for her lover and fear of his departure.

In the disco polo style, Shazza, in her song Bierz, co chcesz (Take What You Want, 1995, from the album Egipskie noce [Egyptian Nights]), expressed her willingness to give herself to a man in a much more adventurous manner, making the title message clear to her chosen one. Her declaration was confirmed by the music video, in which the singer, as a saleswoman in a bakery, offers bread to a customer and then gives him her hand and leaves her workplace for him.

Very similarly, in a text written by Grzegorz Ciechowski, Justyna Steczkowska, as Dziewczyna szamana (Shaman’s Girlfriend), revealed her readiness for sexual initiation and suggested that this experience could give her a new life. Then, without any more metaphors referring to magic, Edyta Bartosiewicz directly communicated that without a relationship with a man there is no life. In the song Ostatni (Last) from the 1997 album Szok’n’Show (Shock’n’Show), the prospect of separation is shown as nothingness, the disappearance of both partners and a chasm opening up in the earth.

Such confessions were in stark contrast to the previously discussed declarations by women who chose not to worry too much about a break-up or to arrange their relationships with men in their own way. A disturbing lack of symmetry also arose, in which women’s dreams of secure devotion encountered men’s narratives of being helpless, lacking initiative and being befuddled by passion.

You must finally learn that you can’t walk away from love – a maniac’s hymn of violence, illustration: Olga Wróbel

In the decade that followed, declarations by men making the meaning of life dependent on entrusting themselves to a woman by no means disappeared. Lady Pank, for example, sang in 2004, ‘Everything would be different / if you were here, I know. / Not so difficult and strange / if you were here, I know’, and in 2008, Piotr Kupicha with his band Feel invoked the figure of Beatrice, allowing himself to be led by a woman with an ‘angel’s voice’.

_{Translated from Polish by Michał Niedzielski}

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