Some non-English music I enjoy, though not at the same time:
Lisa Ekdahl - Vem Vet (Swedish) Nice catchy Swedish tune, maybe jazz?
Samain et Shuait - Les Nomades (French and Anishinaabe) First Nations hip-hop
Gwenno - Chwyldro (Kernewek) Folky dreamscapes in a functionally extinct language (they’re bringing it back, though).
Moonchild Sanelly - Gwara Gwara (English and Xitsonga) Pop-funk-dance mixing international and indigenous traditions.
Majid Soula - Win Terram (Tamazight) Electronic beats from a Berber.
Jacques Dutronc - On nous Cache Tout, on nous Tout de Rein (French) A classic of French rock and roll.
Manu Negra - Mala Vida (Spanish) Punk styled music by folks who like their anarchist forebears.
San Salvador - Quau te Mena(Occitan) Occitanian folk traditions given new life.
TUDI-VOICE - 囡仔你甘知 (Hokkien) - Socially active Taiwanese band in Chinese folk tradition with a modern spin.
Beyond - Glorious Years (Hong Kong Cantonese) Cantopop legends.
Sorry for the YouTube links.
Recently I watched the Kneecap. A biopic of a north Irish hip hop / rap band, performing in Irish and English. Now they have entered my playlist.
WFMU (a radio station in New Jersey) has a weekly show on one of its web streams. It’s called Continental Subway, presented by an American called David Dichelle, who lives in Germany.
He plays all kinds of music in many different languages, as well as different versions of folk songs in English - he’s working through the Roud Folksong Index and has reached Roud 350, The Topman and the Afterguard / The Sailor and the Soldier. However, most of what he plays isn’t in English and as well as music from many different countries each week he will play 8 or 10 songs from a particular country chosen at random. This week it was Chad.
Very highly recommended, not least because all the shows back to 2017 are archived, so you can listen again when you want, and it’s listener supported so there are no adverts. Links to all the shows and playlists here: https://wfmu.org/playlists/CW
I’ve got a pet peeve of spotting French ads using English language songs that they would never think of using if most people listened to and/or understood the lyrics.
Some examples :
A car manufacturer using the same song for decades, Johnny and Mary. Hard to tell who the song is really about, but it’s clearly about a broken, quite unhappy and mentally unstable couple.
A big mart chain using Prayer in C in its happy, “let’s be optimistic” clips.
And see the children are starving / And their houses were destroyed / Don’t think they could forgive you
Hey, when seas will cover lands / And when men will be no more / Don’t think you can forgive you
A perfume ad with Sia’s Chandelier blaring out. Yeah, suicide by booze, definitely what I want to feel classy.
The German version was #1 in America. The English version was #1 in Germany.
Guess the song?
99 Luftballoons?
checks link Yes!
LOL!
My short story about foeeign music
Wife and 6-year-old get back from dance class:
6yo: I want to add that song we heard in the car to my playlist
Wife: oh what was that song again
Me: do you remember any words, we can search for it
6yo: no Wife: no
Me: what station was it on?
Wife: satellite, TikTok radio
Me: ohh ok, I guess we just need to wait or maybe if you find it on TikTok…
Days go by
Wife: It came on in the car but the title of the song was all weird characters
Me: was it like little stick figures or big slashes or just weird drawn characters?
Wife: just wierd
Me: Google: Russian songs on tik Tok
Moreart
Ohh!
I listen to it. It absolutely slaps
Google then mentions controversy
Then I translate the song’s name.
LMAO. 'I will fuck"
Then I go to look for lyric translations
It’s so fucking cringe and not in a naughty or dirty way, it’s just lame cringe.
The beat of the music still slap though.
Reminds me of this funny commercial (nsfw language).
Rofl, That’s awesome.
Another short story: My GF (now wife) was doing event planning. This was an outdoor dog event. Everything was very rural, very unsanctioned. The company they were dealing with brought in all of the stages and equipment. One of her tasks was to provide the music.
I helped her make a nice lengthy playlist that would easily last the entire event. I did however have all of my mp3s with us.
About 30 minutes into the all day event, someone came up and made a request for a song. We were just using winamp, She didn’t see the harm in it so she just grabbed whatever they requested and shoved it in the playlist a couple of songs down. All of a sudden there was a line to make requests.
I already had a lot of the low hanging fruit like who let the dogs out in the queue.
Well apparently, five or six request later they asked for Nine Inch Nails - closer, oh yeah great dog themed song…
I didn’t have my phone with me. I was all the way at the other side of the event. I hear that familiar synth bassline queue up. Buum Dom Bop be boom boom de dibidibi.
I start running toward the stage. Trying to grab her attention to stop the song.
Buum Dom Bop be boom boom de dibidibi, you let me violate you
I’m running some more but I’m out of shape. The music is quite loud there’s no way I could scream loud enough for her to hear me.
Buum Dom Bop be boom boom de dibidibi, you let me desecrate you
I get a stitch in my side and shin splits at the same time… I have to slow down.
A couple more lines go by, I’m not going to make it in time
Buum Dom Bop be boom boom de dibidibi, you let me complicate you
Oh we’re almost through the precourse now
Boo dooo booodooo booOOODOOdeedee help me I broke apart my insides
I’m about 30 ft away but I am desperately out of breath.
Boo dooo booodooo booOOODOOdeedee. Help me get away from myself
A lot of the guys in the crowd around me are laughing their asses off because they know what’s coming
I want to fuck you like an animal
I want to feel you from the inside
Volume off
Scandalous! Mother’s holding their children’s ears, hundreds of bros sitting around thumbs up in the whole event.
We learned a few valuable lessons that day. Don’t take requests for Media that you’re not ultimately familiar with, Don’t bring any media with you that you don’t want the public to hear.
Zappa’s Bobby Brown topped the charts in several European countries, with most people oblivious to the lyrics, people thought it was just some pop song :)
Zappa remains great.
But also at least half of his songs are absolute smut, and we love him for it.
OMG you’re right. Was guilty of that too :)
It’s such a catchy tune.
KMFDM
German: Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid aka No Majority For Compassion (No Pity for the Majority)
American: Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode
Loved them in the 90s through early 2000s when I was in my teens. Including the extended family like PIG, En Esch, and Skold. Last decade and a half have been meh.
Though I’m pretty sure everybody has fondness for the music they liked from teens through early 20s.
It’s better than the best.
God, I can hear this gif so well. One of my favorite songs/music videos.
For those of us less culturally educated, could you share the artist and title?
Oh, my moment! This song has some nice lore, here’s the Wikipedia article.
The song was released in 1998 and was a big hit in India, reaching the West in the 2000s where it quickly became one of the OG memes.
Even back then, at least by the time the song reached the West, the CG graphics were already considered awful, and still the song was so catchy that it didn’t matter.
It turns out that this was the whole point. Mehndi was already a big name in India, but was criticized for always using “an overabundance” of beautiful dancing women in his videos, and that this was the only reason he was popular.
He then recorded this video, featuring only himself, and grabbed another Indian #1 hit…
Thanks! Just saw the music video, and I can’t really say I get the hype, but the backstory makes this pretty amazing.
I love some random foreign artists that I don’t speak the language of and can’t understand at all - Saian Supa Cru, Dengue Fever, Kent, Sigur Ros, Vicentico.
On a side note, I saw BTS on UK TV once and thought it was some kind of comedy pastiche act. What I heard and saw was really terrible, yet the panel on the show were lauding them when it was over, and I just didn’t understand. K-pop is likely not for me, I figure.
K-Pop is for eight-year-olds. It absolutely seems like a joke the first time you see it.
K and J pop is absolutely grating to my ears, but they’re billion dollar industries for a reason. They took the west’s version of boy and girl bands from 30 years ago and turned it up to 11.
They certainly did.
I’m not a fan either, though in terms of musicianship and songwriting quality most of it is far above contemporary american pop. I completely understand why kids would prefer that to the endless “three chords and autotune without a hook” slop.
Yes, that’s probably true. I assume somebody is still making good music, but it doesn’t seem to be reaching me.
I’m curious what you saw. Was it their Graham Norton show appearance? I didn’t like that performance either. Afaik they were at their worst.
One of them couldn’t be there and another had a hurt foot, and they’ve said how self conscious the rest of them were to be missing those two.
This is an excellent time to mention my best friend The Eurovision Song Contest! It’s the longest running international music contest show and it gets hundreds of millions of views.
Here’s last year’s crop of music videos. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmWYEDTNOGULUJYEhh-EUa32rEcHuNXO7
Croatia’s Rim Tim Tagi Dim is a real banger. It’s about the stress of moving to a richer country or city for work and losing your culture.
Italy’s La Noia is amazing. Angelina Mango’s live performances are stellar, and if she’s not huge internationally in a few years I’ll be super disappointed. Her new song (not part of the contest) Melodrama is exceptional too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqF0MSpPcj8
Switzerland sent Nemo, who became the first non-binary person to win the contest. It was said that if he could nail the vocals from the video in the live performance, there would be no stopping them. And they did! Amazing work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO8cQpGNplc
I have so many recommendations, if anyone wants more!
Oh also: !lemmyvision@jlai.lu
Oh nice, I only knew about !eurovision@lemmy.world. Subscribed
Eurovision got in trouble last year for allowing Israel to join. Israel is in the middle east of Asia, not in Europe. The only thing European about Israel is that white people are committing a genocide to steal land.
More the hypocrisy for having denied entry to Russia while allowing Israel’s to remain.
The actual terms for entering are being a part of the European Broadcasting Union; which includes Israel and Australia, despite the “European” in the name.
Well, Australia is also in the Eurovision.
White people committing genocide to steal land. Checks out. That’s the criteria for entry.
Yo just because Europapa was disqualified doesn’t mean it’s not a banger.
Totally agree, and he performed it very well live! The story of the song is so good too. It’s about watching ESC as a kid with his parents, but more his parents have passed away and their old house burned down.
I like the song, and this is a catchy backstory, but I’ve got to admit - the actual lyrics are actually pretty terrible 😅
Will Ferrell did a Eurovision movie I enjoyed. Probably not everybody’s cup of tea, but it was fun.
Holy shit that Nemo song was so good
It is SO GOOD!
My inner city Philadelphia friends even like it.
Updoot for ESC and Melodrama! I’ve had some of Mango’s songs on rotation lately
French hip-hop and Norwegian doom metal are pretty good though.
Krav boca anyone?
Babymetal and The Hu are fantastic gateway artists.
I think you can find an awesome metal band in every major country or language.
Babymetal also did a song with Bloodywood which is pretty good.
Babymetal also did a song with Electric Callboy that’s awesome.
They also toured with Dethklok. Really disappointed I couldn’t go to that one
And bring me the horizon (kingslayer, it’s a BOP) and dragonforce.
THAT’S SO FUCKING COOL
I sometimes joke that BMTH is mid unless they have a feature. Kingslayer is probably my favorite overall.
I prefer J-pop but K-pop isn’t all that bad.
I dunno, I’m not a fan of this sentiment. Music tastes are personal, it’s okay to think, “nah, music of this country isn’t really for me,” because music of a given country will often have certain elements that won’t appeal to everyone. It’s not like you’re uncultured or being unfair for it. And you don’t necessarily have to give it a good try first because you’re probably exposed to it anyways. Any stranger on the street can probably think of an example (though not necessarily a whole song) if you bring up Spanish music, Indian music, K-pop, etc…
The language bit I get, but some people prefer songs where they can understand the lyrics, and that’s also okay. I’m sort of one of those people, though in my case it’s more “I want to have a general idea what’s being said because if it’s a good song I’ll want to sing along and I don’t want to unknowingly say something obscene,” so it doesn’t stop me from listening to foreign songs as long as I can screen the lyrics.
It’s very unlikely that you dislike ALL other countries’ music. One is fine. Five is understandable. But 200??
Plus countries generally make more than one kind of music. Like I don’t like j pop but there are plenty of Japanese people doing rock or metal or ska or whatever.
Listened to the Beatles and they sucked. Now I hate all British music. /s
I was tricked into liking K-Pop. AMA.
Are you as cringe about it as my teenage daughter is?
There’s nothing cringe about my BTS shrine and underwear.
So, the answer is yes?
How does it feel to be a minority?
