Sly & Robbie / Fresh
Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)
resigned but warm, almost lullaby-like
This is a cover of the classic Doris Day standard, reframed by Sly and Robbie's rhythm-section sensibility rather than by any new lyric. The song traces one woman's life in three stages, each ending with the same shrugging piece of inherited wisdom about the unknowability of the future.
fate and acceptance generational transmission of wisdom the unknowability of the future childhood versus adulthood maternal love
Who's speaking
A first-person female narrator recounts three moments in her life -- as a child, as a young woman in love, and as a mother -- each time asking someone she trusts what the future holds and receiving the same answer, which she now passes on herself.
What happens
The song moves in three clean stages: childhood curiosity directed at a mother, romantic hope directed at a lover, and finally the narrator herself becoming the one dispensing the answer to her own children. The question never changes in spirit -- what will become of me -- and neither does the response, which shifts from something she receives to something she gives, closing the generational loop.
How it's built
Strophic and cyclical: three verses of near-identical shape, each followed by the same chorus, with only the addressee and the narrator's age changing. There's no bridge or dramatic turn in the conventional sense -- the structure itself enacts the song's argument, since repetition without variation is the point. The instrumental version's extended, dub-inflected chorus repetitions stretch this circularity even further than the original pop arrangement.
Section by section
First verse (childhood)
The narrator as a girl asks her mother about beauty and wealth, the classic anxieties of a child imagining adulthood. The mother's answer arrives as folk wisdom rather than reassurance, setting the tone for the whole song.chorus that follows.First verse (childhood)
Chorus
“the future's not ours to see”
This line is the philosophical center of the song, stated plainly rather than metaphorically, which is part of why it works so well as something a child could understand and repeat.
Second verse (romantic love)
The question shifts from external markers of success to emotional continuity -- whether happiness will simply persist. The lover's answer being identical to the mother's suggests the song isn't really about who's asked but about the impossibility of any answer at all.
Extended chorus repetitions
In this version, the choruses stack up and stretch out well beyond the original's tighter pop structure, turning the refrain into something closer to a chant or dub-style vamp. The repetition becomes hypnotic rather than merely melodic, letting the rhythm section's groove carry emotional weight the words no longer need to supply.
Final verse (motherhood)
The narrator becomes the source of the answer, addressing her own children's identical questions. The word choice softens slightly, marked by tenderness rather than resignation, suggesting that the same fatalistic phrase can carry comfort once you're the one saying it rather than hearing it.
Craft
- refrain
- The repeated chorus functions less as a hook than as a mantra, reinforcing the idea that the answer to life's uncertainty is always the same regardless of who's asking or when.
- parallelism
- Each verse follows an identical grammatical pattern (question, question, response), which mirrors the cyclical, inherited nature of the wisdom being passed down.
- apostrophe/reported speech
- The narrator quotes herself asking others and then quotes herself answering her own children, collapsing the distance between generations into a single repeated exchange.
Reading it
The most straightforward reading treats this as a song about accepting uncertainty as a form of peace: each generation asks the same anxious questions, receives the same unsatisfying but calming answer, and eventually passes it on themselves, which is itself a kind of continuity even amid not-knowing. A secondary reading, more skeptical, hears the repeated refrain as a mild critique of inherited passivity -- the same answer given without elaboration across three generations might also suggest a family, or a culture, deflecting rather than engaging with its children's hopes. The song itself doesn't resolve this tension; its plainness is doing a lot of the interpretive work.
Context
The lyric here is unchanged from the 1956 Doris Day original written for Hitchcock's 'The Man Who Knew Too Much.' Sly and Robbie's version, appearing on their instrumental-leaning album 'Fresh,' recontextualizes the song primarily through rhythm and arrangement rather than through any lyrical reworking -- their reputation rests on reggae and dub production, so the interest of this version likely lies in how the groove and dub textures reshape a very familiar melody, not in new lyrical content. I have limited certainty about the specific vocal treatment or arrangement choices on this particular recording.
Listen for
- how the rhythm section's groove interacts with a melody built for a very different, orchestral pop context
- whether the chorus repetitions are extended or looped in a way that emphasizes the song's cyclical structure
- any dub-style production techniques (echo, drop-outs, emphasis on bass and drums) applied to a lyric otherwise untouched
- the contrast between the plainness of the words and the rhythmic sophistication of the backing track
About Sly & Robbie
Sly and Robbie were a prolific Jamaican rhythm section and production duo, associated primarily with the reggae and dub genres. Drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare teamed up in the mid-1970s after establishing themselves separately in Jamaica as professional musicians.
1978 - 2021 / Jamaica
Full biography and catalogue