Last Christmas - Verse 4

A face of a lover with a fire in his heart
A man under cover but you tore me apart
Ooh-hoo
Now I've found a real love, you'll never fool me again


Hello and welcome to Learning English with Lyrics, I am your host Jake and today we are wrapping up our series on the song Last Christmas by the band Wham! If you haven't heard the previous 4 episodes in this series, I'd recommend starting with the first one before continuing with this one! If this is your first time listening to this podcast, welcome! I'm glad that you've found us. I recommend that you pause the podcast right here and go back to listen to the episode titled "Introduction", for a very brief overview of how the podcast works. Okay, well before we get back to the song, I want to give a quick shoutout to listener Nima who messaged us from Bhutan! Nima wrote in to tell us that they are enjoying the podcast. Thanks Nima for the encouraging message! Nima's favorite English language song is "Can't Get You Out of My Heart" by the band REO Speedwagon. I'll include a link to it in the description.

If YOU would like a shoutout on a future episode of the podcast, write to us and say hi, either on our Instagram username lelpodcast or to our email address, [email protected]. And don't forget to include where you're from and what your favorite English language song is! I hope to hear from more of you soon! Thanks again Nima!

Alright, let's get started on the last verse of our song!

If you listened to the Taylor Swift version of this song, you'll probably notice that she changed the lyrics a bit in this verse. We're going to stick with the original Wham! version, so I recommend giving it a listen if you haven't yet.

The first line says: "A face of a lover with a fire in his heart"

This line is a bit strange. It's sort of an odd sentence, but we'll do our best to break it down.

The problem is that it's not really a natural sounding sentence. We would expect to see the word "The" not the word "A" at the beginning of this sentence. "The face of a lover". "A face of" is possible, but it is usually followed by an emotion or a feeling. I'm not really sure why the writer worded this way, but sometimes we just don't get to know the "why".

A clearer way to say the same thing would be to say "He had the face of a lover with a fire in his heart".

To have "the face of" someone means that someone else can simply look at you, look at your face, and see things that resemble that type of person. It is obvious. For example, if you have "the face of" someone who enjoys laughing, then just be looking at you, we can tell that you like to laugh a lot. In this case, our singer is describing someone who has "the face of" a lover with a fire in his heart.

So what does he mean by this? He seems to be describing himself, although it's difficult to be sure. Let's change the wording one more time to reflect that: "I had the face of a lover with a fire in his heart". So, he seems to be *contrasting* himself with the person he is singing to. What does it mean to "contrast" something with something else? Well, you're probably familiar with the word "compare". To compare something to something else means that you are looking at what is the same and what is different. If I compare a lemon to a lime, I could say "They are both citrus fruits. They are both the same size. One is green, and one is yellow. They taste different." I am looking at them and finding what is the same and what is different about them.

To contrast two things, is to focus only on what is different. Using the same example, if we were contrasting a lemon and a lime, we could say "One is green and one is yellow. They taste different." We're not going to talk about the things that are similar, because our goal is to talk about the things that are different. We use contrast when we are searching for differences. We are trying to illustrate or emphasize the differences.

So why would our singer be trying to contrast himself with this other person? Well, he doesn't like what the other person did to him. He wrote a whole song about it! That could be one reason. Another reason would be to show how terrible the other person really was to him. When you contrast two things, the differences are much more noticeable.

So our singer is contrasting himself WITH the other person. Remember that preposition: "with". You always contrast with something or someone.

Ok, now let's think back to our previous episode, when we talked about the third verse. How was the other person described? Do you remember? They were described as having a "soul of ICE". Notice anything here? The other person had a soul of ice, but our singer has a FIRE in his heart. He's purposely using opposite ideas, fire and ice.

If ice represents unfeeling coldness, fire represents passion and warmth. A fire in your heart means that you are passionate, usually about something or someone in particular. Our singer also describes himself as a "lover", which in this context, means "someone who is very romantic" or "someone who loves romance." So a lover with a fire in his heart, is someone who is passionate about the person he loves. This couldn't be any more different than his description of the person he fell in love with! They were cold, unfeeling, and unkind. He, on the other hand, is warm, and passionate and loving. The contrast really emphasizes how terrible the other person was being to him!

For those of you who listened to our first series on the song "I Will Follow You Into the Dark", do you remember another phrase involving fire that spoke about romantic love?

The next line says "A man under cover, but you tore me apart."

The first half of this line is an interesting phrase, that seems almost like the opposite of what he just said. It seems like he is still describing himself, but it's hard to be sure. Someone who is "under cover" is someone who is in disguise. He's hiding his true identity. Usually, this phrase is used to describe someone like a spy, or maybe a police officer who is trying to gather information on criminals. A police officer might "go under cover", hiding his true identity, to infiltrate a criminal organization. So how is our singer a man under cover? I'm not really sure. Perhaps he is hiding something from everyone around him. Maybe even though he has the face of a lover with a fire in his heart, he's not really that at all. I honestly don't really know! What do you think? The singer has left it "open" to our interpretation.

The next part of the same line says "but you tore me apart"

To "tear" something is very similar to "ripping" something. It's usually taking something in your hands, or your teeth, and breaking it apart. This is not usually very neat or precise. Usually, this word is used for things like cloth or clothing. If you tear a shirt, for example, you are breaking apart the connections that held it together, in a very messy way. You can also tear other things, for example, if you take a loaf of bread, and break it in half with your hand, you have "torn" the bread in half. It's not very neat, and usually the tear itself is uneven.

Tearing is rough and imprecise, contrasted with cuts which are usually neat and exact.

This phrase "tore me apart" can be used two different ways. The first is the literal meaning. To "tear something apart" means to tear it until it is completely ruined. If I tear a shirt, that means that there is a part of it that is torn, or ripped, but the shirt as a whole is still intact. However, if I "tear a shirt apart" that means that I have torn it until it is no longer able to be used as shirt. It is in pieces or shreds.

To tear "someone" apart is the same idea. I won't go into too much detail, but it's a phrase you might hear when talking about a wild animal attack, or something of that nature.

There is also the figurative, or non-literal version of the phrase. You can also be "torn apart" on the inside, emotionally. That is to say, in your heart or soul. If someone "tears you apart", that means that you FEEL as though you've been torn apart.

This is how our singer feels. Emotionally torn to shreds. Poor guy.

We end the verse with a simple, and for once, a hopeful line.

"Now I've found a real love, you'll never fool me again"

Our singer has found someone else. Someone else who really loves him. Someone who isn't pretending to love him, only to hurt him later. The person he is singing to won't be able to fool him or trick him again, because now he's given his heart to somebody else.

I hope that you aren't feeling torn up by today's episode! And I hope that you'll join us in the next episode, as we dive into our next song!

As always, you can find the transcript for this episode in the description. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate it and subscribe! We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday! And of course, don't forget to tell your friends about us! We would love to hear from you! e pot even more English learning related content every day on Instagram, username "lelpodcast". There you can interact with us, as well as other English learners. There are weekly questions, as well as helpful images related to our podcast episodes. We’re also active on Reddit and Twitter under the same username, lelpodcast. Finally, if you have any questions, comments, critiques, or suggestions for songs, send us a message to any of our social media accounts, or to our email address "[email protected]". We hope to hear from you soon!