✍️ LYRICS & COMPOSITION BY EME LATINA (2026)

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ABOUT:
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I wanted to pay homage to my country of Ecuador, both musically and emotionally. The use of the charango, plus other Andean instruments, draws from the sounds of the Sierra, where instruments introduced during the colonial era were reshaped into something deeply tied to Indigenous identity. In Ecuador, these sounds live on in traditional styles and community music, carrying a sense of place, memory, and continuity.

For the chorus, I chose to use Kichwa, a derivative of Quechua, which is a language that has endured since the early 1400’s Inca Empire, and remains culturally important today. Including it was intentional: a way of grounding the song in something older, something that persists even as everything else changes. My great-grandparents used to speak it.

I also wanted the composition itself to travel through my timeline. I layered in 80s-inspired synths as a tribute to the music my mom and I shared, then contrasted that warmth with modern electronic and ambient textures in the second half. The mix represent where I am now: influenced by the present, but shaped by everything that came before.

The song is about looking back. Childhood once felt vivid and fully mine. Now, even with happy memories intact, life can sometimes feel distant or unfamiliar. The soundscapes reflects this, starting off nostalgic and grounded, becoming more spacious, fragmented, and reflective in the end.

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LYRICS:
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[chorus]
Mana tukuy kuti yachanichu
Pi kani
Kawsayni mana ñukapakchu
Shinami nin
— prestashka kawsaylla

[verse 1]
As a kid, I didn’t have to beee
Anybody or anything;
Wish I could visssit me
Run multiplication tables
Visit horses in the stables
Live within the pretty fables
That and more I was once able
Before fate became unstable
Didn’t know I’d walk the cable
And then the tightrope—

(Broke.)

[verse 2]
My childhood (ooOoh) seems like it was,
It was made out of dreams—
All at once familiar and strange;
Like I lived it yet imagined it,
Believed it yet unfathomed it…

[pre-chorus]
Decisions maaaade, decisions taken
Illusions faaaade, conditions break-innn

[chorus]
III don’t aaalways know
Who I am
My life doesn’t feel like my own
It feeeels like
—-it’s merely a loan

[bridge]
And if I’m honest, honest, ohhhh
I’d crumble in this moment, ohhh
But I’ma promise, promise, ohhh
That I’ll pretend nothing is wrong

[Outro]
Merely a loan (loan, loan)
Doesn’t feeeeel liiiike my own (own, own…)
Miss what it was (was, was)
Back in the past (past, past)
I’ll pretend nothing is wrongggg
Because…
(I don’t aaalways know who I am…)
(Life doesn’t feel like my own)
Merely a loan
Don’t always know
(Ooohhh)
(Ooohhh)
Pi kani
Shinami nin
— prestashka kawsaylla
Doesn’t feel like my own…