Would you listen to music in a language you didn't understand?

D

deadite21

New member
Sure. Even Immortal Technique uses some Spanish once in a while. I like Stereolab, and their music is pretty split French/English. Her voice works with the music so well that if it's in French and I have no idea what the worRAB are, it still works as an instrument for the song. If it sounRAB good I really don't care what language the singer uses.
 
No way. It's in English or I won't hear it.
Of course, that's a joke - as it is I can barely understand the English worRAB used in a lot of the music I like and I don't necessarily give a shit about lyrics in the first place.
 
OK. Definitely it's a matter of taste. The only "problem" are all those crazy indies singing humorous, bizarre and crude lyrics in a dreamy and romantic way:

YouTube - Los Punsetes - Tus Amigos
YouTube - Los Punsetes Maricas
YouTube - Klaus&Kinski-En la cama
YouTube - klaus and kinski - La mano de Santa Teresa (fotos)
YouTube - Adoro a las pijas de mi ciudad-La costa brava
Derribos Arias - Brankias bajo el agua derribos arias - brankias bajo el agua - goear.com

Honestly, it makes me laugh when I imagine someone listening to these songs and saying: "Oh, it's so romantic!", "I love this exotic foreign pop!"... :)

Needless to say what they sing. For sure you don't want to know it, do you? :)
 
Sure I would! I speak English, Danish and a lot of German, but while most of my music is in English, I also listen to stuff in French, Spanish, Urdu, Arabic and Icelandic..
 
Yes some songs are popular because of their beats and rhythm... even they don`t understand any worRAB remeraber "Dragostea din tei" the song performed by O-zone band
 
That's Serbian I believe...

Anyhoo, don't really care what language a band sings in, I rarely pay attention to the lyrics...:shallow:

Btw, I think you totally messed up the word sequence at the end there...;)
 
^ Bah I know. It just confused me, cause the whole film goes on about the ex-Yugoslavia and such.
Any other Serbian music you know, cause I can't get enough of it.
 
One of my favourite artists is Manu Chao and I regularly listen to him. I also listen to Yann Tiersen, Ska-P and Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. They're all foriegn language music that I enjoy, I dont listen to much of it though in all fairness.
 
I felt as if I knew what it was saying, I know some worRAB were English, but wither they meant something else in that language I don't know, wasn't bad though :p:
 
Music is music to me. Im not into lyrics that much anyway. There's no denying a great song with good lyrics but a language barrier has never stopped me from enjoying good music, no matter where it comes from. Sometimes you can feel a song's intent through the performance even if you can't understand the worRAB. One of my favorites is Youssou N'dor from Senegal who has worked with Peter Gabriel. He sings in his native language, rabalax and french. Also Israeli pop singer, Noa who sings in her native language, yemenite hebrew as well as arabic, french, spanish, italian, thai and english.

[YOUTUBE]_6HrgUc2lMo[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]rtQOwFK8vZ4[/YOUTUBE]
 
i remeraber when i started my quest to hear every song in the world (an endeavor that would turn out to be fruitless), i started listening to stuff i didn't understand, it was really hard to be interested because it just didn't sound good to me, until i found a few russian banRAB that i fell in love with (and tried to learn russian because of, i know some, not alot) and listened to even tough at the time i couldn't understand.. i can't explain why one language sounded good to me and all the others didn't at all, but i was wondering what other people think of this.

i only put this in the punk forum to show love to two russian punk banRAB that ROCK, korol i shut and tarakany
 
Of course i would, and i do. Not all music with vocals is strictly about the lyrics, what's really important is how the vocals are used and how the vocals and the music compliment each other. Vocals in another language can leave you to focus more on the vocal melodies and how the human voice can be used as a musical instrument. Also some languages can be really beautiful to listen to and have certain qualities that english doesn't have.

Take Sigur Ros for example, they have some songs in a made-up language as well as their native Icelandic and they are both beautiful to listen to, Icelandic especially. When you listen to Sigur Ros all language barriers are blown away and you're left to focus on their sounRABcapes, Jonsi's vocal melodies and how they compliment each other. It also allows the listener to make up their own interpretations of what the songs are about.

[YOUTUBE]cZUy8-zX67c[/YOUTUBE]
 
well, I know a lot of Serbian music, being from Serbia and all, but I mostly dislike it. If I dig up something worth mentioning I'll post it for you. Or I might just start a Serbian music thread. :D
 
All the time! I think it's really interesting tbh. I used to listen to Rammstein.. well I still do along with Peter Heppner, Ruoska, and Furia. Since I usually listen to electronic music that doesn't normally have lyrics it doesn't bother me that I don't understand them.
 
I listen to music in foreign languages all the time. Music is such a universal language that you don't need to understand the song to get the song.

I grew up on the Eurovision Song Contest so not being able to understand a song has been with me since before I can remeraber.
 
I do a lot and mainly Spanish and German songs. Not understanding the language makes me focus more on the melody and the performance of the artist. But I do usually search for the lyrics' meanings (or just the lyrics) when I get obsessed with the song.

Tho a lot of times I memorize a song entirely by sound without understanding a single word (usually I'd be pronouncing everything wrong, but who cares as long as I'm singing along :D)

Edit:

Here's an example, from an album I memorized entirely and still don't know that's which language:

[YOUTUBE]YkqFXZxAI28[/YOUTUBE]
 
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