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xBlackHeartx wrote:This is a thought I just had. Obviously, many music acts choose to sing in English to increase their consumer base. But are groups that do this popular at all in their homelands, or are they all catering solely to the anglophone population?
kevin wrote:But who needs to understand the lyrics when the music is good? Honestly, often it could be considered better not to understand the lyrics...
kevin wrote:I would in fact say that most popular bands sing in English rather than the local language.
linguoboy wrote:If you want recent examples, the current #1 single on the Swedish pop charts is "Too Late for Love" by John Lundvik. (Although he was born in London, he was adopted by a Swedish couple and has lived in Sweden since he was six.)
linguoboy wrote:I assume you mean in Germany? Honestly, I'm not finding that borne out either in current charts or in lists of overall sales.
kevin wrote:linguoboy wrote:I assume you mean in Germany? Honestly, I'm not finding that borne out either in current charts or in lists of overall sales.
There are a few successful German singers in the list, especially at the top (definitely didn't expect Rolf Zuckowski there!), but if you sum up the whole list, I count 15 primarily German language artists, 34 for English and 3 that don't clearly fit in either group.
But I must admit that the original question was about bands from non-English-speaking countries and I answered a different question. Sorry if that caused the confusion.
Prowler wrote:It's really hard to find good german music. Most of the most well-known German artists I've found have a very sterile and generic sound and lyrics. It seems like all of the good German bands I know sing in English. Like all of those 80s thrash bands such as Sodom, Tankard, Kreator and Destruction. Or the power metal band Blind Guardian. Every single one of them sings in English. If they sang in German instead they'd probably be unknown to most metalheads outside of Germany and German speaking countries in general.
xBlackHeartx wrote:The only 'foreign' music that ever charts here comes out of south and central America. The only European act anyone will recognize here is Rammstein, and even that's rare. But you simply won't find ANY other group that ANYONE will have heard of, unless you somehow manage to stumble upon an immigrant from Europe of course, but I haven't seen too many of those honestly. I've only ever met three, and two of those were foreign language teachers. The third was some Welsh guy who used to work at the local Walmart. Everyone knew about because of his distinctive accent. Also, he's the only person I've ever heard with a Welsh accent, its pretty much unheard of here (as I said, foreign media here is virtually non-existnent, the last British film we had here was Deathly Hallows to give you an idea, and Pan's Labyrinth was the last non-English film we had here, and that was the first one we had in decades!).
xBlackHeartx wrote:The only 'foreign' music that ever charts here comes out of south and central America. The only European act anyone will recognize here is Rammstein, and even that's rare. But you simply won't find ANY other group that ANYONE will have heard of, unless you somehow manage to stumble upon an immigrant from Europe of course, but I haven't seen too many of those honestly.
xBlackHeartx wrote:You're mentioning stuff that's all from decades ago. America isn't exactly the same place it was back in the 60s. Back then we DID get foreign media, such as various British comedy shows
I have no clue who those others are.
I haven't listened to the radio in years. I just look up music videos on youtube, and there I've only been looking up foreign stuff for 10 years now.
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