Город (Gorod) Lyrics in English by GONE.Fludd

GONE.Fludd takes you for a night walk down a big city avenue, and the opening is wonderfully dry: "Я иду, потому что у меня есть ноги" (I walk because I have legs), "Я умею ходить и поэтому иду" (I know how to walk, so I walk). No grand reason, no destination. That deadpan logic is funny, and it sets up everything that follows: he is just drifting through the lights.

What he sees is pure big-city glamour with a chill on it. He heads toward "цветным витринам" (colorful shop windows) while "дорогие лимузины" (expensive limousines) fly past, carrying women "с горящими глазами, холодными сердцами, золотыми волосами" (with burning eyes, cold hearts, golden hair). Burning eyes but cold hearts is a neat little contradiction, and it's the city in one line.

The chorus is the hook: "Город-сказка, город-мечта" (fairy-tale city, dream city), followed by the warning "Попадая в его сети, пропадаешь навсегда" (once you get caught in its nets, you disappear forever). Then the senses kick in. You swallow air full of "простуды сквозняков" (the colds of drafty winds), smelling of "бензина и дорогих духов" (gasoline and expensive perfume). That pairing is the best detail in the song: cheap fumes and luxury, in the same breath.

The second verse looks up and gets almost poetic: smoke from tall chimneys, "бег седых облаков" (the running of gray clouds), and sunbeams dancing "в паутине проводов" (in a spiderweb of wires) over the tin roofs of shabby buildings. So the dream city has peeling houses under the shine.

Learner tips:

• Город-сказка and город-мечта are hyphenated compounds, a common Russian way to say "a city that is a fairy tale."
• Попадая and глотая are verbal adverbs, like English "-ing" in "getting caught" or "swallowing."
• Пропадать means to vanish or go missing, and also to be lost or ruined, which is exactly the double meaning here.