You know the one, right? The one you know all the words to, without actually realising you do? It’s probably one of the most known songs in the world, but does anyone really know what lyrics they’re actually singing? Numa Numa Yay is a song by Romanian pop group O-Zone, and with the power of TikTok, you can finally found out what the lyrics mean…
We’re being colloquial by saying Numa Numa Yay of course, its official title is ‘Dragostea Din Tei’ and is sung by a Moldovan pop group called O-Zone.
Most of us, forgivably, aren’t quite fluent in Romanian however, so TikTok has once again come to the rescue. One helpful user, @hatze6, has translated the words from the chorus to English for the clueless of this world.
In case you’ve never seen them written down before, the lyrics go as such…
“Vrei să pleci dar nu mă, nu mă iei
Nu mă, nu mă iei, nu mă, nu mă, nu mă iei.
Chipul tău și dragostea din tei
Mi-amintesc de ochii tăi.”
And, translated into English, it goes like…
“(You) want to leave but don’t want to take me
Don’t want to take me, don’t want, don’t want to take me,
Your face and the love from the linden [trees]
Remind me of your eyes.”
@hatze6, the user who posted the video, translated some of the better known parts of the song for viewers, including the chorus, which most of us can thankfully translate from ‘alo, alo’ in Romanian, to, you guessed it, ‘alo, alo’ in English.
The song, sadly, didn’t quite live up to the hype that it received in the rest of Europe. It got as far as number three in the charts here, whilst it topped the charts of thirteen countries across the rest of the world, even topping eight end of year charts in countries including Germany, France and Austria.
It became the sound of summer in 2004 across Europe once more, when it was released one more time.
O-Zone split a year later in 2005, but reunited briefly in 2017 and 2019, performing a one-night-only show in Bucharest for the latter.
Stateside however, the song never really saw any success and remained unknown, that was until one YouTube exposed it to an American audience. It went viral thanks to the video entitled “Numa Numa Dance.”
The video showed blogger Gary Brolma going singing the song in his bedroom. By late 2006, the video had been viewed a whopping 700 million times. In 2021, it has now amassed a more impressive, 48 million times.
Now with outside beer gardens open again, how about you impress your friends with your ever so limited knowledge of the Romanian language, and belt this banger out for them. The Euro-Dance classic is simply a drunken must.
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