The Posmodernism of Joaquín Sabina: a Singer-Songwriter and his Lyrics

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explain why Joaquín Sabina’s lyrics can be considered postmodern. To this end, it first contextualizes the multifaceted concept of postmodernism, which emerges as a response to modernity and is characterized by scepticism, fragmentation, and a rupture with metanarratives. Based on this theoretical foundation, the study examines the singer-songwriter genre as a postmodern artistic object defined by its hybridity. Once these aspects have been addressed, the core section of the article analyses postmodernity in Sabina’s lyrics from two perspectives: thematic and stylistic. The thematic analysis explores how Sabina’s lyrics, aligned with the attitudes that characterized Spain in the 1980s and the Movida cultural movement, reflect a postmodern vision of life, marked by a sense of carefreeness and hedonism. Rather than engaging with historical commitments or activism, his songs embrace a playful stance, exalting pleasure and transgressing norms and conventional values. From a more formal and stylistic perspective, the article highlights key postmodern literary devices in Sabina’s writing, such as intertextuality, autofiction, irony, meta-song, the mixture of linguistic registers, and even the use of what we have called “postmodern images”. These strategies reinforce the connection between the lyrics and the audience, as they encourage the recipient’s active participation in interpreting a work that is inherently open in its postmodern nature.