Грязь – People Hatred (Я ненавижу людей)
Everyone hates someone – but discrimination is illegal and out of date. Here’s a solution from Грязь or Gryaz: hate them all, in general. Я ненавижу людей: I hate people – including yourself by definition.
Hating and Drowning
Hating (ненавидеть) is a transitive verb – being hated does something to a person – and is therefore typically in the
accusative case. But here, it’s the
genitive (plural genitive) because, like it or not, people are living beings.
This also applies to animals, but people know what to do with them. In the category of Iconic Opening Lines, this one is at least nominated: Я хочу утопить этот день, как топят бездомных котят, I want to drown this day like stray kittens are drowned. ( Text; lyrics with translation.)
Clips and Titles
Static version on YouTube, plus a video by NMTEG (2018), also available in a B&W version. Videos by Inotcreative (2020) and WXB (2019).
Я ненавижу людей also circulates under another title, which won’t be repeated here. It can be found on Genius.com and YouTube.
More
Грязь is Denis Astapov (Денис Астапов), from Mahiljow or Mogilev, Belarus. Former member of John Doe and manager of ЛСП (LSP). See Грязь | In Person (Studio 21, 2020, 14 min).
Грязь (and John Doe) also included Roma Anglichanin (Рома Англичанин, 1988-2017), who no longer has to deal with anyone. See 24smi, Genius.com, and Several Stories About Roma Anglichanin (34mag, 2018).
- Big Interview with Грязь: About Eternal Losing, Roma Anglichanin, and Making a Living (Afisha, 2020)
- Грязь and Supermelancholy (Colta, 2019)
- Healing “Грязь”: Interview with Denis Astapov (34mag, 2019)
- Denis Gryaz – About Childhood, Old Age, and Faces in the Mirror (The Flow, 2018)
More on VK and this website.
Most of the music here is also available in an
R1 playlist on YouTube (in the order of posting).
Also see
Best Russian Music and
Russian Song Lyrics.
More
Music
Anyone who wants to present Russian music cannot ignore Zemfira. Popular and mainstream – millions of records sold – but also distinctly idiosyncratic. The music is usually accessible (we categorize it under Pop), but the attitude is rock.
Raw Anti-Putin punk from
Nizhny Novgorod /
Нижний Новгород. Loosely based on ‘Maggie’ by The Exploited.
From the green city of
Zelenograd /
Зеленоград. Dreamy indie-folk with a melancholic undertone. Created by
Mikhail Rodionov (1992).
The alarm blares (Ревёт тревога), the road awaits (ждёт дорога). They are many (Их немало), we are few (нас немного). We are in an unjust world (Мы в несправедливом мире) tin wolves in the shooting range (Жестяные волки в тире).
The word offret is Swedish and means ‘sacrifice’; the band Offret is Russian and makes heavy music. The link between the word and the band: a
1986 film in Swedish by the Russian Andrei Tarkovsky.
A band from Saint Petersburg that makes a kind of post-punk/indie-pop. Not for long yet, so not much material yet. However, they already have a few very successful tracks with original music videos. До свиданья, дорогая is the
Russian title for the film
The Goodbye Girl (1977), but it has nothing to do with it.
