El tercio de los sueños

The song “El tercio de los sueños” sounds like a whisper tangled in the air, as if someone had taken a snippet of a late-night conversation and turned it into a melody. It’s not a song that hits you right away, but rather seeps in with that blend of nostalgia and nonchalance that’s often Andrés Calamaro’s trademark. The lyrics, brief yet rich with meaning, play with images that seem plucked from a dream—or a hazy memory—where the everyday and the surreal blend without warning. The rhythm, for its part, moves forward with a cadence that doesn’t seek to impose itself, but rather to invite, as if each chord were one more step on a path we already know without having traveled it before.

Recorded in 1997 for the album *Alta suciedad*, this track was one of the first new songs Calamaro composed after leaving Los Rodríguez. The album, produced by Joe Blaney in the United States with Anglo musicians, ended up selling more than 700,000 copies and became the second best-selling Argentine rock album. “El tercio de los sueños” wasn’t a standout single, but its unique atmosphere—somewhere between melancholy and playfulness—ultimately earned it a place among the most memorable tracks on that album. Rolling Stone magazine included it among the 100 best Argentine rock albums, and years later, on a list of the 250 essential Ibero-American rock albums, *Alta suciedad* ranked 20th.