Mysterious English by Lena again/Wer versteht den Text?

The Eurovision Song Context approaches and Lena’s song has been chosen. Does anyone understand the text? The title is ‘Taken by a stranger’, which sounds worrying enough, but is the first line really ‘She’s got a knuckle in her eye’? For more theories, see TQE.

LATER NOTE: the Eurovision site has now posted the original lyrics:

Original Lyrics
Eurovision Song Contest 2011 Final
Performer: Lena
Song title: Taken By A Stranger
Song writer(s): Gus Seyffert, Nicole Morier, Monica Birkenes
Song composer(s): Gus Seyffert, Nicole Morier, Monica Birkenes

She’s got a knuckle in her eye
He knows her cat call
Can’t escape from telling lies I heard her saying
Hey mind if I take this chair
Hey mind if i take this chair
He drops a pause
She looks annoyed
But she’s so mean he thinks she has to be the one
Taken by a stranger
Stranger things are starting to begin
Lured into the danger
Trip me up and spin me round again
You got some coffee on your collar
And you forgot to comb your hair
But I can’t wait till I do better
You’re here and I don’t care
I can’t help it if you like it
Cause I won’t be here tomorrow
No one ever told you that you wouldn’t be rejected
Taken by a stranger
Stranger things are starting to begin
Lured into the danger
(Danger is a risky business)
Trip me up and spin me round again
Dip dip dada dada da
Dip dip dada dada da
Uh uh uh uh
Nah nah nah nah nah
Taken by a stranger
Stranger things are starting to begin
Lured into the danger
(Danger is a risky business)
Trip me up and spin me round again

STILL LATER NOTE: here is more information on Eurovision, plus Lena singing German on Sesamstraße.

10 thoughts on “Mysterious English by Lena again/Wer versteht den Text?

  1. I agree with ‘she’s got luck in her eye’, not necessarily all luck as in the TQE suggestion. More distracting into the video are the under-arm tattoo, non-stageable nightie-wearing, statutory hair-preening and cosmetically unenhanced facial features.

  2. Probably the same knuckles as in “I believe in knuckles”, one of the lines that inspired Axel Hacke’s “Der wei

  3. I have just added the original lyrics from the Eurovision site.
    Last year I quite liked the way Lena wore a plain black dress and rejected some of the stage tomfoolery that goes on. But seeing this video, I wonder if she’s going to be surrounded by twenty beings encased in Lurex?

  4. I think that despite knowing the actual lyric, I will forever hear the first line as “She’s got Nyquil in her eye”.

    I’m most disappointed that the contest isn’t being held in Berlin…

  5. English?
    Sure, I recognise most of the words she uses – at least in the written lyrics. But even those words are rather disjointed and not really “ENGLISH”. I can’t speak for the sung version (which will probably be UNSPEAKABLY garbled), and I’m not in a hurry to hear it either. But I think the defining passage is found in lines 25 to 29 of the printed lyrics:
    Dip dip dada dada da
    Dip dip dada dada da
    Uh uh uh uh
    Nah nah nah nah nah
    What more can be said?

  6. I see the song was written by 3 people in Los Angeles, only one of whom was born in Norway. I suspect I just don’t understand electropop. A problem I have with the sung version is the peculiar mixture of pseudo-Cockney vowels with other types of English. Lena’s English seems to sound OK except when she is singing.

  7. Strange, I saw something on TV too about the song having been written by an American songwriter in Los Angeles(!?). There shouldn’t really be any ambiguity here with the “actual” text but… Lena has one of the most peculiar accents I’ve heard yet.

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