Diplomat’s Son Lyrics

How to Format Lyrics:

  • Type out all lyrics, even repeating song parts like the chorus
  • Lyrics should be broken down into individual lines
  • Use section headers above different song parts like [Verse], [Chorus], etc.
  • Use italics (<i>lyric</i>) and bold (<b>lyric</b>) to distinguish between different vocalists in the same song part
  • If you don’t understand a lyric, use [?]

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About

Genius Annotation

Either a Whit Stillman-esque coming out / gay love story or a parable about Clash frontman Joe Strummer; really, it’s both of these things. Music critic Simon Reynolds called it “everywhere/everywhen pop” in his 2011 book Retromania.

Rostam had this to say about it in a Reddit AMA:

Ezra sent me a short story called Diplomat’s Son when we were in college. The last paragraph read:

“I wondered, watching him bleeding on the rugby field beneath my mud-covered boot, if he was looking at me through the proscenium of a Turkish taxicab’s rumbling windshield or, perhaps, the small port window of the rickety boat which had taken him down the Ganges.”

Years later I started working on a song on my own, this was between our first and our second albums, I knew I wanted two distinct parts with two really distinct grooves but both Jamaican in feel.

I started to take the idea of the “Diplomat’s Son” and put it in a different context. I started to look at it as more of a love story than a story about competitive students. I had a vocal melody and lyrics for the chorus: “He was a diplomat’s son, It was ‘81”.

Then Ezra and I got in the studio and started working on fleshing out the song: writing a verse, and prechorus together. More sections after that. Figuring out some vocals for the bridge as well.

We added CT on drums, Baio on Bass… and the rest is history.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

What’s the sample in this song saying?
Genius Answer

The sample is of M.I.A. singing an onomatopoeia of drumming on the side of a boat:

We drum on it
Like jun cha cha ju gu ju gu cha!
Jun cha cha ju gu ju gu cha!

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