La canzone mononota [English translation]

Living an existence of exertion

tailing the chimera of a composite melody,

extolled by exquisite exceptionalities.

And then you eventually find out

you were but missing that one note,

that one beautiful note.

How silly not to have come up before

with the one-note song!

A little-known song

that you make with one note,

and that note is this.

It's the one-note song:

you can change the rhythm;

you can change the tempo;

you can change the ambiance;

you can change the chords;

you can play it as major, minor, augmented, diminished.

You can change the singer;

you can change the subject;

you can sing it on your own,

you can sing it together with the choir.

You can have the orchestra play it

while you take a little break.

You can change the language:

per esempio la puoi cantare in italiano,

auf Deutsch, en français, en español,

in Chinese: "wang, twong, threeng..."

You can do so many things

without changing the note!

You can change the octave,

you can sing an octave down.

You can pretend... that it... is over.

But if you're not even good enough

to sing the one-note song,

we suggest you relinquish your singing dreams.

If you're a virtuoso singer,

beware,

for here, if you sing like "aeahah",

you're out.

The one-note song,

which does not make compromises,

and if it does, the compromise is tiny,

like: this.

The one-note song

has had its own forefathers:

above all, Rossini, and Bob Dylan, Tintarella di Luna.

It's even easy to whistle,

democratic, opposed by dictatorships.

Have you noticed? The Cuban anthem is full of notes!

Then there's the one-note samba,

but if you listen carefully, it changes after a while.

Jobim didn't have enough balls to carry out a goal;

he didn't believe it to the end.

But we... did.