“Tempo Perdido” by Renato Russo (1986)

Source: Lucaseisinger, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Renato Russo (1960-1996) was the lead singer of Legião Urbana (“Urban Legion”), one of Brazil’s most well-known rock bands. He struggled with drugs and died of complications of AIDS at the age of 36, making the lyrics to this song all the more poignant. “Tempo Perdido” (“Lost Time”) was the first single on Legião Urbana’s album “Dois” (“Two”), is the band’s most-performed song, and its last line (“Somos tão jovens” | “We are so young”) is the title of a 2013 biopic about Russo.

Listen to the song (and watch its era-appropriate official video).

Lost Time
Every day when I wake up
I no longer have
The time that passed
But I have a lot of time
We have all the time in the world

Every day before going to sleep
I remember and forget
How the day went
Always forward
We don’t have time to lose

Our sacred sweat
Is much more beautiful
Than that bitter blood
And so serious
And savage! Savage! Savage!

See the sun
Of this morning so gray
The storm that’s coming
Is the color of your eyes
Brown

So hug me tight
And tell me one more time
That we are already
Far from everything
We have our own time
We have our own time
We have our own time

I’m not afraid of the dark
But leave the lights on now
What was hidden is what hid itself
And what was promised
Nobody promised
It wasn’t even lost time
We are so young

So young! So young!