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Soviet Pop Music: Jaak Joala – I’m Drawing You

The song below was performed in 1981, and I listened to it on a vinyl disk throughout 1980s and early 1990s, for as long as my vynil disk player was OK. On my way back from Tallinn in 2002 I shared a compartment with a lady who told me that in the years since the USSR demise Jaak Joala denounced his work on the Soviet pop scene. I don’t know exactly what he meant, and he surely has the right for his own opinion, but I hope he didn’t mean to dismiss the songs by Raimonds Pauls, including the one you are about to listen.

Indeed, this is what the Soviet analogue to the Top of the Pops looked and felt like (it is called The Song of the Year and runs to this day). And the dashing Jaak Joala, tall, handsome, with a great voice has obviously helped to shape the type of men I like. Another Estonian who also impressed me as a child was an actor Lembit Ulfsak.

The song I’m Drawing You is about a guy who loves a girl and so draws her portraits, thus bring her in his life even before she crosses the threshold of his house. I think many of us have worn the guy’s shoes at least once in life. The lyrics by Andrei Dementiev, music by Raimonds Pauls.

Author: Julia Shuvalova

Julia Shuvalova is the author of Los Cuadernos de Julia blog. She is an author of several books, a translator, and a Foreign Languages tutor. She lives and works in Moscow, Russia.

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