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From album
Signos
Soda Stereo · 1986 · Track 5
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The story behind
The guitar riff that opens Persiana americana doesn’t sound like what Soda Stereo had been doing in those years. It’s not a song that starts with a catchy chorus or a rhythm that invites dancing, but with a sharp drum hit followed by a clean, repetitive plucking that sticks in your head. That sound, which later repeats like an echo after each verse, is what makes the song unlike anything heard on Latin American radios in 1986. The bass by Héctor "Zeta" Bosio enters almost at the same time as the guitar, but without stepping on the riff’s space, as if floating around it. The lyrics, for their part, tell a scene that could be from a movie: someone spying on another person through a window blind, with a tension that never becomes explicit but is felt in every word.
The lyrics were born from a radio contest: Jorge Antonio Daffunchio, a listener who sent his text to the program Submarino Amarillo, won, and Gustavo Cerati gave it its final shape. Daffunchio said the idea came to him while watching a Brian De Palma film about voyeurism, though he later clarified he might have confused the title. The song made its way into the repertoire of Signos, the band’s third album, and from day one became an unexpected phenomenon. During the Gira Signos —which toured Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and other Latin American countries— fans sang along before the band finished playing it. Something in that combination of riff, bass, and lyrics had connected with something bigger than Argentine rock at the time. In 2002, Rolling Stone Argentina and MTV ranked it 31st on the best Argentine rock songs list, and in 2006, Al Borde placed it seventh on the 500 best Ibero-American rock songs. But in 1986, when it was released without a video or promotional campaign, no one imagined it would end up being one of those songs that keep playing over and over in any country in the region.