The unified singing of “Muito romântico”

Abstract

This paper proposes an analytical exercise around “Muito romântico”, Caetano Veloso’s song that integrates the long play Muito: dentro da estrela azulada, recorded in 1978. It aims to investigate the way in which lyrics and melody match to create an effect that, in accordance with Veloso’s stance contrary to any kind of creative crystallization, escapes from what is commonly expected of the romantic discourse. The main hypothesis raised here is that an unpretentious listening to the song may hastily lead one to believe that its enunciator is dedicated only to the expansion of the dimension of intensity and to the minimization of extensiveness; a closer reading, however, that has in discursive semiotics its theoretical background, reveals, in fact, another face of the enunciator, which, seeking to create an unified sense of identity in order to be able to argue with the otherness that challenges him, bets on a tensive ruse that articulates “thematization” and “passionalization”, opposite modes of “compatibilization” between lyrics and melody. At the limit, this work intends to discuss, although only in an introductory manner, the notion of style in the song text, seeking to point out the way in which the diction of a song-enunciator is deduced from the analysis of the ways of “compatibilization” between melody and lyrics.