Hello! So, many of you may not know this about me because I almost never mention it, but I love Purple Kiss's "Cast Pearls Before Swine" almost beyond my ability to express in words. Everything about it is great. I love their singing, the rap part, the music itself, the lyrics and like I said earlier, just everything. It can't be critiqued because it's just that good. Anyway, I was looking online for an English cover of it so I could understand what they were singing without having to look at the lyrics the whole time. I would have been fine with either an official version or a fan made one.
Lo and behold, I couldn't find one anywhere! I searched and searched on YouTube and couldn't find one, which made me sad. Not long ago, I saw someone on here post English lyrics to Red Velvet's "Monster" that people said were good and they liked, so I got an idea. If there is no English cover, I'll make my own. I plan to make two follow up posts to this one: one will be me attempting to cover this song (a lot of you already heard my singing voice from Masked Singer on here) and me analyzing the English lyrics I made, because I tried to include a bunch of wordplay (some more sneaky than others) that I'm proud of, because I am a sucker for good wordplay. I'll link both posts here once I finish them.
Cover: coming soon!
My English Lyric Analysis: coming soon!
In the meantime, I already finished the lyrics writing, so I figured I would post the lyrics here. I don't think they're flawless, far from it actually, but I'd say they're pretty good if I do say so myself. The song does have the occasional English word in it already, even if it is mostly Korean. I kept all of the pre-existing English words in the order they're in and didn't change any of them because one of my pet peeves is when people translate K-Pop songs into English and mess with the pre-existing English words. Just work around them as much as you can, it'll be a fun challenge. It was for me.
One setback of my lyrics is I am not sure how much they line up to the original Korean ones tonally. They may match up perfectly in that regard or not. Diction (word choice) is important and can make a huge difference on tone. Same goes for Korean words. I am sure there are some Korean words with the same meaning but different tones to them if that makes sense. Because of that, I am not sure how well the tone fits, or doesn't. If you know Korean (or don't, but just want to give feedback anyway) and want to let me know how I did in this area, let me know, I'd love to hear what you think.
Also, I just want to clarify, I did not intent to copy all of their lyrics word for word (at least not for most lines). I simply tried to take inspiration from them so I would have a starting point. If you believe, after looking at my lyrics and theirs, that mine are too similar, I apologize as that was not my intent. I hope you understand.
I know about zero Korean, so I looked up my best friend, English lyric videos. I found two different sets of English lyrics. For each line, I would first count how many syllables were in it using the Romanized version and slowing it down to 0.5 speed, so I had time to count them as I listened to them. This way, the syllables would match up and help my English version flow well. Then, I would look at both English translated versions that I had. I would see which one I liked better, or if they were both the same. Once I knew which one, I wanted to use, I would take the English meaning and try to write it down in the number of syllables I needed to fill. Because I prioritized syllables so much (as well as wordplay, but that's for another post) some lines are almost identical to one or both of the lyric videos, while other lines are vastly different and one of the only things they have in common to the English lyrics the lyric videos used is the same meaning. All in all, this was a very good strategy for me to use, so if you ever want to make English lyrics to a song, you can try my strategy and see how it goes for you.
Without further ado, here are my English translated lyrics of the song! I also included the two lyric videos I used for reference and in case you want to try singing along with my lyrics. Let me know how you think I did with the lyrics and have a great day/night!
First Verse:
Say, what do you mean? Try being honest.
Hey, what have you done? Just look in my eyes.
My love’s on fire, it’s growing brighter, yet I’m all alone, punished by it.
Stop, no more lying, end all your lies, instead, maybe, you should lie down
Maybe then you’ll see, see more easily
My worth, my own value to me, how about you leave now?
In my foolish love I was careless (careless), now I could never care less, bye, bye
Once I replaced my rose-colored glasses, I clearly know
Love isn’t just sweet
Chorus:
Jewelry, shining tears, I’ll pass on it, pass, pass
Cast pearls before swine, I don’t need it, I don’t need it
Jewelry, shining tears, I don’t need it, pass, pass
Cast pearls before swine, I don’t need it
A pearl necklace on~ a pig, (uh uh) no, no, A pearl necklace on~ a pig
The way we were, I did too much
Second Verse:
You were so bad, what made me stay? My head hurt, my heart hurt, I was a fool
Unopened, I trashed and burned all of your mailed mail every day, uh ya
Walk away, go away
Forget me fool, don’t think about me like that, that was hard for you back then, ya?
The two of us are so different, that’s why I liked you, maybe
Even then, we got mad, the two of us, all of our fights and bickering,
Always new ones before we had made up
In my foolish love I was lovesick (lovesick), now I’m healed up, I’m stronger, bye, bye
Once I replaced my rose-colored glasses, I clearly know
Love isn’t just sweet
Chorus:
Jewelry, shining tears, I’ll pass on it, pass, pass
Cast pearls before swine, I don’t need it, I don’t need it
Jewelry, shining tears, I don’t need it, pass, pass
Cast pearls before swine, I don’t need it
A pearl necklace on~ a pig, (uh uh) no, no, A pearl necklace on~ a pig
The way we were, I was too good
Bridge:
Now that you’re gone, you’ll regret not valuing my worth
Do not come back to me
I'll kick you like a ball and hope you land far from here
Stay out of my sight
La la la la la la la la la
Enjoy today, go and play, I wish only the best for you, uh
La la la la la la la la la
Hang with your friends, go out and play,
Since we’re done, don’t ask me to stay, we just go
Love isn’t just sweet
Chorus:
Jewelry, shining tears, I’ll pass on it, pass, pass
Cast pearls before swine, I don’t need it, I don’t need it
Jewelry, shining tears, I don’t need it, pass, pass
Cast pearls before swine, I don’t need it
A pearl necklace on~ a pig, (uh uh) no, no, A pearl necklace on~ a pig
The way we were, we are now done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPP5KS3tICk
