Mental Floss

The Peppy ’80s Song “Vamos a la Playa” Was Actually About Nuclear War

The lyric “Vamos a la playa, todos con sombrero / El viento radiactivo, despeina los cabellos” translates to “Let’s go to the beach, everyone in a sombrero / The radioactive wind, messes up the hair.”
ByArika Okrent|
Righeira Vamos a la playa 1983
Righeira Vamos a la playa 1983 | marcos roberto

Even if you don't remember anything else from that Spanish class you took in high school, you do know how to say “Let’s go to the beach.” For that you can thank the smash hit song of 1983: “Vamos a la Playa,” the second single off the debut album of Italian duo Righeira. But not many of us ever bothered to learn anything beyond the title lyric—and as it turns out, the song is not as carefree as it seems.

“Vamos a la Playa” is about the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, though the image of apocalyptic destruction it presents is about as cheerful a version as you can get. Here’s what the song is saying:

“Vamos a la playa, oh oh oh oh
Vamos a la playa, oh oh oh oh
Vamos a la playa, oh oh oh oh
Vamos a la playa, oh oh oh oh
Vamos a la playa, la bomba estalló
Las radiaciónes tuestan y matizan de azul”

Translates to:

“Let’s go to the beach, oh oh oh oh
Let’s go to the beach, oh oh oh oh
Let’s go to the beach, oh oh oh oh
Let’s go to the beach, oh oh oh oh
Let’s go to the beach, the bomb exploded
The radiation toasts and tints everything with blue”

And that’s not all: The passage “Vamos a la playa, todos con sombrero / El viento radiactivo, despeina los cabellos” means “Let’s go to the beach, everyone in a sombrero / The radioactive wind, messes up the hair,” while “Vamos a la playa, al fin el mar es limpio / No más peces hediondos, sino agua fluorescente” translates to “Let’s go to the beach, finally the sea is clean / No more smelly fish, just fluorescent water.”

As lead vocalist Johnson Righeira explained to Vice in 2017, the song came to be at the end of 1981. “[I]n anticipation of a New Year’s Eve that we were supposed to do at the Casablanca in Florence, we went into a cellar with these friends who had their studio there ... I already had half an idea of ​​‘Vamos a la Playa,’ which was the evolution of my first things inspired by the Sixties. I wanted to make a beach song but post-atomic, with abundant use of electronics, and there in that cellar it suddenly came to me, putting my hands a bit haphazardly on a keyboard ... eh, the chorus of ‘Vamos a la Playa’ came to mind and I have to say that it was certainly one of the most important moments of my life.”

Keep it in mind as you strap on your own wrist phones and head to the playa this summer.

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A version of this story ran in 2016; it has been updated for 2025.

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