Cuesta abajo

The story behind

Cuesta abajo sounds like a non-stop journey: Gardel sings it with that mix of melancholy and elegance that made him unique, where each note seems to fall with the same naturalness with which tango moves between the street and the stage. The song doesn’t ask for permission to stay; it settles in the ear from the first measures and doesn’t let go until the end, as if time itself had stopped in those three and a half minutes. There’s something in its structure — so tight, so rounded — that makes it work just as well in a café in Buenos Aires as in a theater in France or in the memory of someone hearing it for the first time decades later.