This song has the melody and chord progression from Bulat Okudzhava’s Georgian Song. But the lyrics are original, and I added a new verse. If you don’t know of Bulat Okudzhava, you can think of him as the Russian version of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen.
The original version of this song has two common names. Sometimes it’s called Georgian Song, and sometimes it’s called Grapeseed Song. In Russian, the name of the song is Виноградная косточка or Грузинская песня.
Why My Version Of This Song Has Different Lyrics
Originally, I wanted to translate the lyrics as closely as possible from the original Russian language to English, but when I started translating, many of the ideas in this song felt too abstract to be translated directly.
Also, as I dove more deeply into understanding the original poetry of this song, I started to think deeper what it was that the original poet was trying to express. The original song focused on the bigger things in life like friendship, and gave perspective on how after all is sad and done, our little follies don’t really matter.
But as I thought deeper, I couldn’t help but wonder why there is a reference to a woman in the third verse of the original song. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that the original author wanted this song to be more of a love song. It certainly sounds like a gentle love song.
That gave me the idea to rewrite the lyrics of this song to focus more about the love that the singer has for that woman.
Themes In The English Version Of This Song
Since I turned it into more of a love song, like in so many loves, the love isn’t equal between two people. The same is in this song. In this song, the singer is wondering whether the woman he dreams about truly loves him. It can be thought of as a little bit of a song about a crush.
More On Russian Bards
From the 1950s through the 1990s and arguably still today, there was a strong musical movement of Russian bards. These were poets turned singer-songwriters who wrote magical and sincere poetry. You can equate them to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen in the west.
From these Russian bards, my favorites are Bulat Okudzhava, many of whose songs I have translated to English, Vladimir Vysotsky who the best known Russian bard, and Alexander Rosembaum. Here is a page with all my Bulat Okudzhava songs in English.