Are European bands that sing in English actually popular at all in Europe?

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Re: Are European bands that sing in English actually popular at all in Europe?

Postby Johanna » 2019-04-10, 18:31

vijayjohn wrote:You've never heard of Adele or One Direction? :o I'm sorry, but I'm having difficulty imagining how that's even possible in the US today. There's no way you can live under a rock deeper than the one I live under, but even I've heard of them.

Same here. And Ed Sheeran.

The thing about both One Direction and Ed Sheeran is that they are generic enough that people have heard of their names and heard their songs, but they can't put them together. I couldn't before I went on my little research trip on Youtube yesterday and I probably still couldn't attribute the One Direction songs to the right band in a blind test. Not even sure about Ed Sheeran, but he doesn't use autotune from what I can hear, so that narrows it down.

vijayjohn wrote:I haven't (knowingly or willingly) listened to the radio pretty much ever. I've almost exclusively listened to foreign stuff my whole life.

I'm similar to that too, not that I don't ever listen to the radio by my own choice, but it pretty much only happens when I'm driving and then I try to keep to stations that play classic rock and pop. So when it comes to modern stuff, we are probably on about the same level, just in different countries.

The thing is, modern pop music is everywhere. Enter a store? There it is. Youtube videos that are pretty much a slideshow? Yep.
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Re: Are European bands that sing in English actually popular at all in Europe?

Postby OldBoring » 2019-04-13, 10:58

English is the language of modern pop music.

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Re: Are European bands that sing in English actually popular at all in Europe?

Postby TeneReef » 2019-05-01, 12:23

OldBoring wrote:English is the language of modern pop music.

except on Radio Italia
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Re: Are European bands that sing in English actually popular at all in Europe?

Postby Moraczewski » 2019-09-25, 8:08

And I have a question to the US guys here. I listen to a lot of pop songs made by Europeans in English, and quite a few of them are sung with heavy accents and often contain grammatical errors. How do US listeners perceive such songs? I don't know whether Scorpions or Blind Guardian have really good English lyrics, do they? Lyrics in electronic dance music made by Europeans may even be very very dumb - and while most europeans who are not English natives can simply disregard the lyrics meaning at all, what effect has it on English natives especially from the US?

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Re: Are European bands that sing in English actually popular at all in Europe?

Postby linguoboy » 2019-09-25, 15:19

Moraczewski wrote:And I have a question tofor the US guys here. I listen to a lot of pop songs made by Europeans in English, and quite a few of them are sung with heavy accents and often contain grammatical errors. How do US listeners perceive such songs? I don't know whether Scorpions or Blind Guardian have really good English lyrics, do they? Lyrics in electronic dance music made by Europeans may even be very very dumb - and while most Europeans who are not English natives can simply disregard the lyrics meaning of the lyrics at alltotally, what effect hasdoes itthis have on English natives especially from the US?

Nobody expects deep lyrics from dance music. If they're particularly ridiculous (e.g. "Boom boom boom let's go back to my room"), people will mock them, but mostly they don't pay attention. I remember noticing some awkward turns of phrase and mispronunciations in Ace of Base's lyrics, for instance, but that didn't stop them from having the number one song of 1994 in both Canada and the USA. As for metal bands, you often can't make out the lyrics anyway and, when you can, they're often just as dumb. I don't recall Scorpions having noticeably more nonsensical lyrics than Def Leppard or Mötley Crüe.

Coincidentally, yesterday I was listening to an old tune by Signal Aout 42, a Belgian industrial band, called "Dead Is Calling". The title has always annoyed me because the mistake (obviously it should be "Death Is Calling") is just so basic and glaring. But that's something of an exception; I'm sure, say, Front 242 has equally significant mistakes that I've never noticed because they're buried in the verses somewhere.
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Re: Are European bands that sing in English actually popular at all in Europe?

Postby razlem » 2019-10-02, 0:17

Moraczewski wrote:And I have a question to the US guys here. I listen to a lot of pop songs made by Europeans in English, and quite a few of them are sung with heavy accents and often contain grammatical errors. How do US listeners perceive such songs?

If it's a dance song I usually don't care. But if it's trying to be soulful or deep, it just doesn't connect for me. I feel like there's a certain weight to lyrics when singing a ballad that can be hard to replicate if you're not extensively fluent in it. It's like they're singing in English for the retail value of it, rather than singing in the language for its own sake.
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Re: Are European bands that sing in English actually popular at all in Europe?

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-10-09, 6:20

I hate it when this happens in Eurovision because I'd much rather listen to people performing songs in not-English, but otherwise, I haven't noticed it. From an American perspective, at least, it's pretty surprising sometimes to find out that some singers are actually European (and not necessarily native speakers of English, either).


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