JakeOfClubs makes great points, but to my ears, it still sounds like she’s saying “Latina.” It’s especially clear the third time she sings the chorus. With Window Media Player, you can play a song at slow speed to hear it more closely, and in that third instance, at least, there in no way she’s saying “The Diva” or “Regina.”
I agree “The Diva” would make more sense. Now that I’ve read all the above arguments, I even think “Regina” would have been a better choice. Members of Blondie may be kicking themselves that they didn’t think of those words. But in that third instance, at least, it’s clear as a bell “Latina.”
Ethnicity is a rather trivial detail for the songwriter to throw in, unless we assume someone (the writer, the guy in the song, or the woman singing it) has a real thing for Latinas. Then again, this is the same band that gave us “Kung Fu Girls,” which emphasizes to an uncomfortable degree that the woman in the song is Chinese. A few decades passed between “Kung Fu Girls” and “Maria,” and attitudes about race shifted, but Blondie does not strike me as a band that bows to political correctness.
I’m not sure Debbie Harry is singing “Latina” every time. There might be a deliberate switch, as you say. Hell, it’s even possible that, the third time, she just sang “Latina” by mistake and no one bothered to fix it. But the word she sings at that moment is clear.
JakeOfClubs makes great points, but to my ears, it still sounds like she’s saying “Latina.” It’s especially clear the third time she sings the chorus. With Window Media Player, you can play a song at slow speed to hear it more closely, and in that third instance, at least, there in no way she’s saying “The Diva” or “Regina.”
I agree “The Diva” would make more sense. Now that I’ve read all the above arguments, I even think “Regina” would have been a better choice. Members of Blondie may be kicking themselves that they didn’t think of those words. But in that third instance, at least, it’s clear as a bell “Latina.”
Ethnicity is a rather trivial detail for the songwriter to throw in, unless we assume someone (the writer, the guy in the song, or the woman singing it) has a real thing for Latinas. Then again, this is the same band that gave us “Kung Fu Girls,” which emphasizes to an uncomfortable degree that the woman in the song is Chinese. A few decades passed between “Kung Fu Girls” and “Maria,” and attitudes about race shifted, but Blondie does not strike me as a band that bows to political correctness.
I’m not sure Debbie Harry is singing “Latina” every time. There might be a deliberate switch, as you say. Hell, it’s even possible that, the third time, she just sang “Latina” by mistake and no one bothered to fix it. But the word she sings at that moment is clear.