2022.01.01.
Proletarian (Where I Stand)
Versions: #1(Laurtiz: This will change everything.
It's the beginning of a new era.
Lauritz: Then I comes home
to find that my wife is a homeowner.
Lauritz: And here I'd planned
to live and die as a proletarian.
Aksel: What's a proletarian?
Lauritz: No, I don't suppose mum would have taught you.
It's someone who doesn't own anything.) 1
I feel an increasing urge
to rip off my skin
And turn shit upside down
in order to not end up as a wretch of a man
Between people bathed in rémoulade and chips2
The glitter and glamour of a suburb
mixed in with bad lines3
Tired of serving the stinking rich
selling them luxury goods
Or flipping burgers at the chippy
for a moldy crowd
Of dangerous types who I guess
are just as used up as me
With zero tolerance up their sleeves
and a scent of idiot
Proletarian with the same sweatsuit
as his wife
Football dad walks through the concrete desert
like a dromedary
Home to his burrow
and visits the pub with his mates
Escaping the cold, back to life
so we forget it all
Thick smoke fills out
the bottom of our lungs
And spreads through the system
so we can't feel the hunger
I walk through the fog
listening to seagulls scream
And hope it's the last time
I wear shoes worn down to the soles
But forget me, fuck it
I'm managing well enough for now
People like us keep searching
blindly for better times
Driving expensive cars
even though we know we can't afford it
Because the moment we have just a little
the whole world needs to know it
People keep staring at the same things
but I have nothing to say (because)
every time I think people have change just a little
there's nothing new
Because it's still the same
from where I stand
People keep staring at the same things
but I have nothing to say (because)
every time I think people have change just a little
there's nothing new
Because it's still the same
from where I stand
Where I'm from
closeness keeps all the shit together
Brothers who bring shame
are looked at like shit in a drainpipe
Because you pansies can't do what we do
and have fuck all to do
With the audience
we're trying to reach
Yeah, I'm from Albertslund4, you cunt
One of the lads you love to shit talk
and who get
your day to crumble
The social class
that doesn't exist according to you5
The arseholes your offspring
must never-ever imitate
And who do so for the same reason
because shit's fucking interesting
My life, in contrast to your shitty life,
suddenly seems interesting
So take your happines and idyll
and stick it up your ass
Haven't lost my temper
just completely honest and fucking furious
But forget me, fuck it
I'm managing well enough for now
People like us keep searching
blindly for better times
Driving expensive cars
even though we know we can't afford it
Because the moment we have just a little
the whole world needs to know it
People keep staring at the same things
but I have nothing to say (because)
every time I think people have change just a little
there's nothing new
Because it's still the same
from where I stand
People keep staring at the same things
but I have nothing to say (because)
every time I think people have change just a little
there's nothing new
Because it's still the same
from where I stand
- 1. The opening of this song is sampled from a scene in the Danish historical drama 'Matador' (sometimes translated as 'Monopoly') where the working class character Lauritz Jensen, known as 'Red' due to his strong communist ideals, arrives home to discover that his wife has become wealthy enough to buy a house and that their young sons don't know the word 'proletarian.'
- 2. I've chosen British s for some of the slang in this translation because it translates more readily to British words. In other word, 'chips' here is in the British sense -- it would be fries in a lot of other English dialects.
- 3. i.e. of drugs
- 4. A working class suburb to Copenhagen
- 5. A reference to claims that poverty doesn't exist in modern Denmark