Watch Brian May’s ‘Otro Lugar’ Video, Spanish Version Of ‘Another World’
‘The Spanish world has always been incredibly kind to us and to me,’ he says.
Brian May has today (5) released a new video featuring a Spanish language version of his song “Another World” entitled “Otro Lugar.” It’s available now on his official YouTube channel.
May gave lucky attendees a preview of the video at the recent launch of the new, deluxe edition of his second solo album, 1998’s Another World, at the Greenwich Planetarium in London. There he talked about why he had chosen to do this interpretation, which was originally released in its audio form on the 1999 compilation Baladas 99, alongside tracks by artists such as Robbie Williams and Joe Cocker.
The guitar hero and singer-songwriter spoke in the native tongue of the Canary Islands, before translating: “This is for you because the Spanish world has always been incredibly kind to us and to me.”
In the Spanish language video, May visits the Teide Observatory on Tenerife and sits alongside his much-loved tree on the island of El Hierro, memorably featured on the Another World album cover.
Discussing the creation of the videos in Tenerife, he went on: “We filmed two versions of ‘Another World’ in the Canaries. In fact, we went out mainly to do the Spanish one at the beginning. So it’s kind of fitting that the Spanish one turned out better than the English one! We managed to shoot a lot more in Spanish than in English, strangely enough, and maybe I worked harder on it, I don’t know. But the shots just seem to come nicely together.”
May went on: “When you’re watching this (and you’re English speaking), bear in mind that the Spanish words mean almost exactly the same as the English words. They’re about a parallel universe and what could have happened in Another World.”
“The tree is a great symbol for Another World for me, and we revisited it,” he said. “It’s a really ancient tree. It’s a kind of juniper, a Sabina, as they call it here. But its form is extraordinary – it’s grown in a very harsh environment with constant high winds. So the only way it has survived is by bending – in a long sweeping curve, the tree resembles a beautiful woman with her head thrown back in the wind.
‘The gods have been with us’
“So we had an amazing trip with these three islands and the gods have been with us. I don’t know if someone’s looking after us because everywhere we’ve been, we’ve had the perfect weather for the shots, and this video should be stupendous.”
He concluded: “So this has been a dream for me, to revisit the places which fuelled my life and also fuelled the creation of this album Another World, particularly the pine forest which encircles the central volcano, El Teide. And that forest is a very special place for me, for many reasons. And that’s the place I want to be when I leave this planet, because to me, it’s the closest place to Heaven.”
“Otro Lugar” features as one of the tracks on Another Disc, which is included on the 2CD and box set formats of the Another World reissue and contains a special collection of remixes, rarities, and live tracks.
Buy or stream Brian May’s Another World.
