In 1987, a personal tragedy led Argentinean rock star Fito Páez to compose the dark masterpiece "Ciudad de Pobres Corazones", a very personal album for him
unlike many of his previous works but also very successful. The album closes with a poetic song called "Track-Track" which brings emotions felt by the
artist while dealing with the tragedy, and during the chorus when he pleas for someone's love there seems to have some hope left inside the chaos. In 1991,
Os Paralamas Do Sucesso released "Os Grãos" and one of the tracks was this version in Portuguese and that's how I got acquainted with over the years. Truth
is I love both versions, both music videos and I think one complements the other even though the exact feeling of each is slightly apart from each other -
I envision Paralamas as a hopeful song while Fito focus on the desperate side of it all with a minor glimpse of hope.
A classic video with heavy rotation on MTV, this one presents time-lapse kind of imagery with the camera at full speed inside of a bus filming the
streets of Rio de Janeiro; then we get the vision of a character who walks down several streets observing the movement, the crowd, and at brief moments
we see Herbert Vianna, Bi Ribeiro and João Barone in small cameos here and there, at times appearing together, other times appearing apart from each other.
In one mysterious moment we see a guy on top of an old construction and people below watching him thinking he's gonna jump but instead he throws a dummy
from up there. Cut to a moment later, the camera enters this same building and makes the whole path to the building and then jumps all the way to the ground.
It fits well the desperate part of the lyrics.
I think this video is a true triumph in terms of Brazilian music videos back then, with a great cinematic idea often used in the movies, excellent
editing that gives the impression it was filmed in one take and to make things even more interesting we have a powerfully memorable song with a great beat,
great rhythm and well translated from the Spanish words of Fito. Definitely one of Parlamas greatest moments of all time. I never get tired of watching it.
10/10.