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Shnootz - Reaction Video (Sade - Like a Tattoo)

Matt Snider

806 views

What's up, folks! I'm back with another Sade reaction from her/their greatest-hits compilation (thank you again to Sofia!), and this time we listen to the smooth and atmospherically ambient "Like a Tattoo," a song with great vocals (as per usual) and arrangement, as well as lyrics I did my best to follow on a first listen. So join me as we return to Sade for the first time in a while. Cheers!

Also I run a Patreon featuring extra content of different types, so anyone interested in supporting what we do here on YouTube and getting early-access to video-reactions and audio reactions blocked on YouTube, as well as behind-the-scenes videos, watchalongs, and blooper-reels from my videos, can go here: Patreon: Shnootz

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#ShnootzReactions #Sade #GreatestHits #Soul #SadeReactions #Shnootz

6 Comments

@joanofarc81 8 months ago (edited)

In the song, Sade is relating this man's story as told to her. Not her's. The stranger is relating his guilt and shame over committing a war crime.

@seansimms6693 7 months ago (edited)

One of her Greatest Songs, as a poet…it don’t get no better!

The Light!
Shot diamonds from eyes
Hungry for life
And thirsting for the distant
Riveeer…

@SofiaMarques18 8 months ago

I had almost forgotten this one. It's not one of my favourites and maybe I skipped it sometimes when listened to the CD (ha, and it's been so long ago! 😜), because it sounds so sad. But it's another good song, and the best thing about it for me is her voice, of course. 😉 My favourite female voice of all times. 👌
I also never understood anything of the lyrics, and listening to it now didn't give me any insights about the subject matter. 🤔 So I googled it, and found an answer in an interview she gave in 1992:

"Some of the songs on here are things I wanted to write about a long time ago. One in particular was “Like a Tattoo.” That song is about a man who has been in Vietnam, but it’s not really about Vietnam. It’s about war and killing somebody. I met a guy in a bar in New York years ago. It was an Irish bar on 14th Street. The song was my interpretation of what he told me. I tried to write it before, but it didn’t quite work out."

Now I understand the reference to the gun and lines like "broken by the burden of his youth", "war still raging inside of me" and "I reveal my shame to you" (many lines are supposed to be the man's own words). And why it sounds so sad.
Well, again, I learned something new today. 🙂