Black Eyelashes

Alex Kapranos shared the meaning behind this song in a December 2024 interview with Riff Magazine: Perhaps the most telling reveals itself on the album’s most unique song, “Black Eyelashes,” for which he pulled from his love of Greek Rembetiko music of the early 20th century, influenced by immigrants from surrounding areas like Turkey and the Balkans. Kapranos, whose father immigrated from Greece to England at the age of 10, even sings in Greek here. The song is about his fear of not having an ancestry or national identity. It’s about him searching for his “Greek-ness” on childhood trips to his father’s homeland, as well as his most recent trip there in 2019. “When I was a kid I would say, ‘I’m Greek,’ and they would say, ‘You look awfully blonde for a Greek boy,’ or ‘You don’t speak Greek.’ Kapranos sings those accusations on the song—in Greek. “I’m saying, ‘Why doesn’t he speak Greek. He’s not really Greek, because he doesn’t speak Greek’,” he said. “I’m a typical son of an immigrant, because I know where I’m from, but I know I’ll never be truly from there.” The song incorporates a traditional Greek lute called a bouzuki, which gives “Black Eyelashes” an Eastern-tinged sound. The song’s title pulls from a common Rembetiko theme of dark eyes, eyebrows or eyelashes. “Mine are blue. So I guess that’s me trying to find my black eyes or my black eyelashes; it’s a metaphor,” Kapranos said. https://riffmagazine.com/features/franz-ferdinand-alex-kapranos-faces-fears/

Écriture

Alex Kapranos

Production

Alex Kapranos, Mark Ralph

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