From Rosenrot · 2005 · Track 9
Te quiero puta!
«I love you, whore!»
More from the album · Rosenrot
In context
The only piece in the catalogue sung entirely in Spanish, with the German accent left intact and mariachi trumpets over the band's guitars.
- Textbook Spanish
- Exoticism
- Discomfort without a buffer
- Origin
- It wasn't born in Spanish. In March 2004 it was listed in the GEMA database as “Ich bin”, at 3:34, and the magazine Sonic Seducer listed it as the sixth track of the fourth album; those who heard it say it had German lyrics. Once that tracklist was dropped, it was reworked: the final version was recorded in 2005 at Teldex Studio in Berlin — unlike the rest of “Rosenrot”, recorded in 2003 in Málaga — and came out on 28 October. The female backing vocals are sung by Carmen Zapata. It circulated as a promotional single, with no commercial release and no official video.
- The German key
- There is no German verse and no translation to offer, so unlike the rest, this entry doesn't quote a verse in the bilingual block. It is the only one in the catalogue where that doesn't apply.
- What the band has said
- The band has not explained the choice of language or arrangement.
- Live
- Rarely performed; it had no commercial single release.
Our reading
The combination is deliberate and not subtle: the song doesn't imitate Mexican music, it uses it as a backdrop. For Spanish-speaking listeners it arrives with nothing in between, and that is precisely what makes it uncomfortable — there is no layer of foreign language to cushion the lyrics.
The archive's interpretation, not an official account.
Read the full lyrics at a licensed source
A song in our language
Of the entire Rammstein catalogue, this is the only piece sung completely in Spanish. There is no German verse and no translation: the whole lyric — “vamos, vamos mi amor / me gusta mucho tu sabor”, “let’s go, my love, I like your taste very much” — is in phrasebook Spanish, with the German accent fully intact and a hammering insistence on fruit, lemon and flavour.
Over it sits an arrangement of mariachi trumpets laid on top of the band’s guitars. The combination is deliberate and not subtle: the song does not imitate Mexican music, it uses it as scenery.
There is no translation to offer here, so this entry does not quote a verse in the bilingual block the way the other lyrics do. The song reaches a Spanish-speaking reader with no intermediary, which is exactly what makes it uncomfortable.
How it came to exist
The track was not born in Spanish. In March 2004 it appeared in the GEMA database under the title “Ich bin”, running 3:34, and that same month the German magazine Sonic Seducer published a tracklist for the fourth album listing it as the sixth track. According to people who heard that version, it had German lyrics, with the line “Ich bin ergeben” in the chorus.
When the tracklist was discarded, the song was rebuilt. The final version was recorded in 2005 at Teldex Studio in Berlin — unlike the rest of Rosenrot, recorded in 2003 in Málaga — and came out with the album on 28 October that year. The female backing vocals are sung by Carmen Zapata. It circulated as a promotional single in 2005, with no commercial release and no official video.
What has to be said from here
This is the hardest Rammstein song to defend from a Spanish-speaking country, and this archive is not going to pretend otherwise. The title attaches the word “whore” to a second person with no context beyond desire, and the portrait of the south — fruit, flavour, available heat — is precisely the one Europe has been manufacturing about Latin America for centuries.
The irony is readable: this is the same band that mocks American cultural export in “Amerika” and portrays an entire city as a prostitute in “Moskau”. In that context “Te quiero puta!” is another case of a constant method: adopt the cliché so enthusiastically that it becomes visible. But the irony works in a language the listener does not speak, and in ours the joke arrives unwrapped. Both readings are legitimate; it is worth holding both.
Context
Ninth track on Rosenrot (28 October 2005). It took five years to reach a stage: it debuted live on 25 November 2010 and has been played 21 times, most recently on 4 October 2022.
Notes by Rammstein Colombia, for the purpose of analysis. The full original lyrics belong to their authors.