Spanish Sahara (Foals) - True Meaning
Spanish Sahara is a song that has been debated over since it's release in 2010. What is it's real meaning? What is it about?
I have been looking into this and have been able to uncover what I believe is the real meaning of the song. For those of you who haven't heard the song here is a link to the official music video -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaVE4WVlsDQ
I also recommend a read-through of the lyrics that you can find by following this link -> http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/foals/spanishsahara.html
Now onto the theory... I spent a very long time analysing the lyrics of this song, finding countless examples of similes, metaphors, semantic fields etc. After a fruitless hour or so, I began to look at the verbs, nouns and adjectives and noticed a pattern with the adjectives. There are five adjectives in the song :
Black
Boiling
Broken
Dirty
Dead (which is only included in some of the lyric videos/sites, some times it is heard as 'that')
All these words start with either a 'B' or a 'D' :
Black
Boiling
Broken
Dirty
Dead
Although this could just be a coincidence, there are words that I think could fit into the song
better.This the route I decided to go down to try and find the meaning of the song. I looked into the history of both letters ; B in the Phoenician alphabet was called 'Beth', which meant house. The letter was also designed to look like a floor-plan... In Hebrew the letter was called 'beth', 'bet' or 'bayt'. This information is extremely important in the theory.
Now onto 'D' : in the Phoenician alphabet, 'D' was called 'Daleth' and meant door or fish, the letter was a form of triangle. The Greek equivalent for this was Delta, also a form of triangle.
These facts alone didn't get me very far, so I layered the images on top of each other to create new images. The 2 most important ones are these...
I asked a lot of my friends (thank you for your patience with me) what they saw in these images, there were some weird answers but I eventually settled on my idea that the one on the left is a town and the one on the right is the same town but destroyed. My basic premise so far is that the song is about a town that gets destroyed. After thinking about the lyrics in the song, I concluded that it was a coastal town that got destroyed by floods. I went through the lyrics and looked at their meaning within this new context:
So I walked into the haze - 'haze' could be referring to the dust created by rubble or sand from sand-bags. It could also be talking about the 'sea air'.
And a million dirty waves - this could be referencing the sea and the water that is filled with rubble after going through the town.
That summer I cannot bear - 'that summer' might be talking about the summer that the floods happened and the fact that he doesn't like to think about it.
The Spanish Sahara, the place that you'd wanna , leave the horror here - This is the line that most would say derails my theory; however, I think it strengthens it. They are talking about forgetting about the floods in the Sahara. The Sahara is a desert and in this case a desert with very little water, making it the perfect place to forget about floods.
It's future rust and it's future dust - 'dust' could be another thing referring to rubble, but 'rust' is very straight forward. Rust is a combination between iron and oxygen, but the process is sped up with water...
If you're still not convinced, I have two more pieces of evidence...
*Life Is Strange spoilers ahead*
I first heard this song at the end of -my favourite video game ever- Life Is Strange. The game is about a teenager who finds out she can time travel and at the end of the game you are at the top of a cliff, watching over your small, home, coastal town about to be destroyed by a tornado. Without explaining the whole time-travel mechanic, you basically end up choosing whether to sacrifice your best friend Chloe, and save the town ; or sacrifice your town and save Chloe. If you choose to sacrifice Chloe, Spanish Sahara is played during the final scene. If you choose to sacrifice your town, you are faced with a scene showcasing the amount of death and destruction there is.
Although Spanish Sahara is not played during this scene, it remains a famous song from the game. I think the damage in the town from Life Is Strange has closely reflects the damage a flood battered town would have.
The last piece of evidence includes the album cover for the album the song is from.
There's not much to say about this piece of evidence other than 'it's underwater', but I still think it's a valid point.
There is still one unsolved mystery surrounding who is 'you' in the song in addition there is still one more part of the song that's untouched. Analyzing the lyrics again, I was able to find out that 'you' are a building that got destroyed or fell of a cliff edge during the flood. Here are some examples :
Now I see you lying there - Could be referring to a fallen building
Now the waves they drag you down - Talking about waves 'pulling' the building down.
Carry you to broken ground - 'Broken ground' could refer to the cliff that this building supposedly fell off of
The last question was, 'what type of building is this?' One possible answer is that it was a house, which links into the Phoenician alphabet letter ; Beth, of course meaning 'house'. However, I was looking for something less obvious. This is where I looked into the last couple of verses of the song. The recurring phrase is 'choir of furies'. I think that 'choir' could be talking about a church choir and 'furies' could be referring to a commonly seen fear of God.
Overall, I think that the song Spanish Sahara is about a seaside town destroyed by floods; one of the destroyed buildings mentioned is a Church. That is the theory! I hope you enjoyed reading this and please don't forget to share, follow and subscribe if you can.
Thanks For Reading
And
Goodbye
