The Song that Keeps Coming Back
Culture Quick-Hit, April 17, 2024
This week we have a fun cultural quick-hit article that features and example Moldova’s unexpected, and often unnoticed, cultural power in music. Specifically, we’re talking about the new song from DJ David Guetta & OneRepublic titled “I Don't Wanna Wait” (youtube video link).
This song is actually a remake of the song Dragostea Din Tei released by the Moldovan band O-Zone in 2003 (video on youtube).
Improbably this is not the first nor the 2nd but the 3rd time this song has crossed into the US pop culture scene.
Back in 2004 an American man named Gary Brolsma released a video on an early internet site called Newgrounds called “Numa Numa Dance” (link to youtube). The video became an early viral sensation as Brolsma lip synched to Dragostea Din Tei. The video was watched over 700 million times in 2 years and had a big enough impact on internet culture to warrant its own wikipedia page.
Later, rapper T.I. released a song called “Live Your Life” (link to youtube) which featured Rihanna and included both samples of Dragostea Din Tei as well as re-recordings of the original melodies.
Now we have the latest entry by DJ David Guetta & OneRepublic. As with T.I., the new song does not utilize translations of the lyrics from O-Zone but simply uses the catchy tune and chorus structure to create yet another hit stemming from this Moldovan song.
So in celebration of this exceptional Moldovan cultural phenomenon we’re going to try something new in Moldova Matters - a pop culture poll. For anyone bold enough to listen to all 4 variants of this song here’s a poll to vote for your favorite!
Youtube links are in the text above. I’ll keep the poll open until the weekend and reveal the Moldova Matters pop-sensation winner next week!
Watched the O-Zone video to see if the song was familiar—made me feel happy and nostalgic, so I’m pretty sure it made some of those rutiera trips to and from Chișinău go by faster (a few of our vehicles had nice sound systems.) Also possible that it was a popular dance number at my school.