Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)

"Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)"
Single by Queen
from the album A Day At The Races
B-side "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy"
Released 25 March 1977 (Japan only)
Format 7"
Recorded July - November 1976
Genre Rock
Length 5:57 (Album version)
4:55 (Single edit)
Label Elektra (Japan)
Writer(s) Brian May
Producer(s) Queen
Queen singles chronology
"Tie Your Mother Down"
(1977)		 "Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)"
(1977)		 "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy" (Queen's First EP)
(1977)

"Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)" (手をとりあって Te o Toriatte) is a song by Queen from their 1976 album A Day at the Races. Written by guitarist Brian May, it is the closing track on the album.

The song is notable for having two choruses sung entirely in Japanese, and it was released as a single exclusively in Japan, reaching #49 on the charts.[1] (The B-side was "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy".) This song features a plastic piano and harmonium, both which are played by May. They brought in a local choir to sing the chorus at the end. On the album, the song is concluded by a one-minute instrumental intro featuring a Shepard tone melody, which is actually a reprise of the beginning of "Tie Your Mother Down": this was intended to create a "circle" in the album, typical, for example, of Pink Floyd's albums.

It was performed live in Tokyo during the Jazz Tour in 1979 and again when the band visited Japan during The Game and Hot Space tours in 1981 and 1982, respectively. When Queen returned to Japan with Paul Rodgers in 2005, a truncated acoustic version was played during May's solo set. The same arrangement was used for Queen + Adam Lambert's festival appearances in Japan in summer 2014. Two years later, during the Japanese gigs of the Queen + Adam Lambert 2016 Summer Festival Tour, the song was played in its entirety featuring the full band.

"Teo Torriatte" was covered by Japanese singer Kokia on her 2008 Christmas album Christmas Gift, and by Mêlée in 2010 and can be found on the Japanese version of their album The Masquerade released in Japan on 18 August 2010. Andre Matos (former Angra singer) covered the song on the Japanese Edition of his 2010 effort Mentalize. Queen's version is also one of 38 songs included on the benefit album, Songs for Japan (compiled in response to the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Tōhoku), released on 25 March 2011.

References to the song

Romanisation of the title

The song's title in Roman letters uses an outdated form of romanisation by applying the particle を ("wo"/"o") to the word before it. Under more modern convention, "手をとりあって" would be romanised as, "Te o Toriatte," or "Te wo toriatte."

Furthermore, although the Japanese single's cover gave the romanised version of the title as "Teo Toriatte", the back cover of the A Day at the Races album misspells this as "Teo Torriatte" (adding an additional "r").

Live recordings

Chorus translation

The chorus part sung in Japanese goes as follows:

"手を取り合って　このまま行こう (Te o toriatte Kono mama ikō)

愛する人よ (Aisuru hito yo)
静かな宵に (Shizuka na yoi ni)
光を灯し (Hikari o tomoshi)
愛しき　教えを抱き (Itoshiki Oshie o idaki)"

The chorus part sung in English is the rough equivalent of:

"Let us cling together as the years go by,
Oh my love, my love,
In the quiet of the night
Let our candles always burn,
Let us never lose the lessons we have learned."

Personnel

Covers

References

  1. ↑ "Queen "A Day At The Races" album and song lyrics". Ultimatequeen.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-10-13.
  2. ↑ Richards, Kim (2011-01-18). "Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together Hands On • Page 1". Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 2016-10-13.
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