Anyway, I purposed after that conversation to quit this sort of self-flagellation. Why can't you get this? Everyone else has no problem with this material. If I didn't understand material quickly or accurately, I'd take to verbally flogging myself, "Loser! You dummy. I fessed up that often, while I was studying, I would get frustrated with myself. We were talking about the internal narrative in our minds. My guess is that many of us would be singing along with Beck, "I'm a loser." I remember an epochal conversation I had with a friend in grad school. We often have an internal 'song' playing in the back or our minds, like elevator music - but what if we thought about the lyrics of this song? What if the internal narrative of our minds were laid bare? What if a transcript of our thoughts and consideration of ourselves were manifest before our eyes? Maybe we should stop now and then and consider the value of words about ourselves. We often consider the value of words about others. Spurgeon was right: no one knows what a kind word can do. Probably all of us have winced at ourselves during moments of self-doubt, and rants of self-destruction, and I believe that's what Beck is doing with this lyric. Saying it in another language isn't quite as condemning it makes the blow softer. My own sense of this verse is that Beck was trying to obscure his meaning a bit, and perhaps even to himself. In terms of hiding meaning: clearly, if you speak Spanish to a crowd of crowd of English speakers, you can expect some confusion. The mixing of languages can serve many purposes it can be a tacit demonstration of intelligence it can get your message out to a larger audience it can also hide your meaning. Translated literally, from Espanol, it means, "I'm a loser." It introduces a little more mystery into an already mysterious song. Beck famously sang, "Soy un perdedor/I'm a loser baby/So why don't you kill me?" The "soy un perdedor" part was an act of genius in terms of musical instinct.