Song Meaning
This song opens with a series of questions about the cost of everyday items, immediately establishing a transactional tone. The narrator asks about curtains and ashtrays, but the answers reveal that these things aren't bought; they're repurposed or collected. The curtains are the wedding canopy, and the ashtrays are gathered from various hotels, suggesting a life where possessions are either inherited or acquired through less conventional means, rather than purchased outright. This sets up a tension between the idea of value and the reality of how things are obtained.
The chorus hammers home the central theme: "לכל דבר מחיר, לדל ולעשיר" (Everything has a price, for the poor and the rich). This refrain acts as a cynical equalizer, implying that no matter one's status, everything is subject to a cost or a valuation. The repeated "נה נה נה" chant, however, injects a playful, almost dismissive, absurdity into this otherwise stark pronouncement, hinting that perhaps the system of pricing is not as straightforward as it seems.
The second verse continues the price-tagging, asking about wardrobes and wall paint, with answers that are specific yet nonsensical. "שלוש מאות לירות במזומן, כל מטר מרובע" (300 Lira in cash, per square meter) for wardrobes, and "שמונים ואחד הנביאים, פתוח כל שנה" (81 prophets, open every year) for who painted the walls. The third verse then flips these questions, asking about the painters and the prophets, creating a dizzying, circular logic. It seems the lyrics are less about literal costs and more about the arbitrary nature of value and the confusion that arises when trying to assign a fixed price to everything, especially when the objects themselves have a history or a symbolic weight.
Ultimately, the song crafts a feeling of playful disillusionment with the commodification of life. By juxtaposing concrete questions about price with surreal, unanswerable, or repurposed origins for objects, it highlights the absurdity of a world where everything is assigned a monetary value. The catchy, repetitive chorus and nonsensical answers create a sense of shared, slightly bewildered, but ultimately good-natured acceptance of this strange economic reality.
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