The main reason that bands do not sing in their native language, is to make it more assessible to a variety of languages. English has become... the standard of metal. I'm not really sure why. I guess not enough Europeans sing Finnish or something. As a person who likes lyrics, I often wish bands would hire a native english speaker to review their lyrics first to say, "That... just doesn't mean what you think it means." Also, we get the crazy accents that some have. Anyhow, in a sense of 'true metal', I was thinking that they probably should not be singing in English, just so that its more assessible.
Should metal band sing in their native language...
- Thread starter Cheiron
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Jim LotFP
The Keeper of Metal
I believe that:
A- A singer should sing in his native language unless there is an artistic reason not to. In most cases, I suspect the reason everything is usually in English for purely commercial reasons. (the thing that most confuses me would be Scandinavian bands playing folk- or viking- metal with lyrics in English... I mean wtf...) The language barrier can get in the way of what a band is attempting to say. Being able to communicate in a language does not equal the ability to be creatively expressive in that language.
B- If not singing in English, bands should provide English translations in the booklets along with the native lyrics, for their international listeners.
C- If non-native languages appear in the lyrics, then the band should indeed get a literate native speaker to look over the lyrics. It's not like lyrics need to be grammatically correct to be "right" in a musical context, but any bending of the language should be by choice and not by ignorance.
Sounds good. Rip it apart.
A- A singer should sing in his native language unless there is an artistic reason not to. In most cases, I suspect the reason everything is usually in English for purely commercial reasons. (the thing that most confuses me would be Scandinavian bands playing folk- or viking- metal with lyrics in English... I mean wtf...) The language barrier can get in the way of what a band is attempting to say. Being able to communicate in a language does not equal the ability to be creatively expressive in that language.
B- If not singing in English, bands should provide English translations in the booklets along with the native lyrics, for their international listeners.
C- If non-native languages appear in the lyrics, then the band should indeed get a literate native speaker to look over the lyrics. It's not like lyrics need to be grammatically correct to be "right" in a musical context, but any bending of the language should be by choice and not by ignorance.
Sounds good. Rip it apart.
I don't see that so strictly at all. Any language is but a means of communication, and if you feel that what you want to communicate needs to get out in a language other than your native one, you should do it - the more so in an artistic context. In music, the sound plays a role as well, and the best lyrics are both meaningful and phonetically fitting the music.
Another thing is that if you are multilingual, you are able to switch between languages with ease. In doing so, you take on a different role somehow. Every language has its stereotypes and conventions you have to follow. In ´language classes, people with the same mother tongue often do conversation in the language they are learning, which is in fact as unnatural as singing in a foreign language. Both is a kind of playacting as a means to an end (learning in the former case).
In music then - and especially in rock - English is the language associated with all the attributes of the genre. Turkish and Arabic do sound odd together with sexy pentatonic guitars and distortion. Of course you are free to use your own language - English is not mandatory, but in guitar music, it has turned out to be the most popular...
on the other hand, there are more bands than ever singing in their own language, also in metal, so I don't see a problem: if it works, it works.
Another thing is that if you are multilingual, you are able to switch between languages with ease. In doing so, you take on a different role somehow. Every language has its stereotypes and conventions you have to follow. In ´language classes, people with the same mother tongue often do conversation in the language they are learning, which is in fact as unnatural as singing in a foreign language. Both is a kind of playacting as a means to an end (learning in the former case).
In music then - and especially in rock - English is the language associated with all the attributes of the genre. Turkish and Arabic do sound odd together with sexy pentatonic guitars and distortion. Of course you are free to use your own language - English is not mandatory, but in guitar music, it has turned out to be the most popular...
on the other hand, there are more bands than ever singing in their own language, also in metal, so I don't see a problem: if it works, it works.
BenMech
student of the d'eh
Jim LotFP said:I believe that:
A- A singer should sing in his native language unless there is an artistic reason not to. In most cases, I suspect the reason everything is usually in English for purely commercial reasons. (the thing that most confuses me would be Scandinavian bands playing folk- or viking- metal with lyrics in English... I mean wtf...) The language barrier can get in the way of what a band is attempting to say. Being able to communicate in a language does not equal the ability to be creatively expressive in that language.
B- If not singing in English, bands should provide English translations in the booklets along with the native lyrics, for their international listeners.
C- If non-native languages appear in the lyrics, then the band should indeed get a literate native speaker to look over the lyrics. It's not like lyrics need to be grammatically correct to be "right" in a musical context, but any bending of the language should be by choice and not by ignorance.
Sounds good. Rip it apart.
This reply of yours was copy/pasted DIRECTLY from Scum. I recognize the argument word for word
English has become the standard in all rock and pop music, not just Metal. In some cases it's understandable. I live in the Netherlands and Dutch is not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing of languages (although Vandale - who sung in Dutch - were an excellent hard rock band). In the end it doesn't really matter in what language one sings, but if your English isn't all that great you really shouldn't bother.
Anyone remember these clowns?
*ouch*
Anyone remember these clowns?
*ouch*
Jim LotFP said:
I don't know if the reason for singing in English is financial in most cases... though it almost certainly is in at least some. Even so, however, I don't believe that automatically makes it a bad decision. Sometimes (I stress, SOMETIMES), taking commercial reasons into account can still yield (what I consider to be) a good album.
But aside from commercial considerations, some musicians have stated that they use English because they feel it is the best language for rock music. Just like people who aren't Italian still sometimes compose operas in Italian. Certainly in terms of rhyming, English one of the easier languages to work with. Also, given the immense amount of cross-pollination that has taken place in English (what with England being conquered by so many different groups over the centuries, then spreading out over the world and absorbing bits of various languages), I've been told by people who know a lot about languages that if you are looking for a language in which you can find myriad different ways in which to phrase something, English gives you more flexibility than just about anything else.
Jim LotFP said:
Agreed.
Jim LotFP said:
Agreed. I remember reading an interview with Ralf Scheepers a while ago (I think it was Ralf Scheepers, at any rate), and he says he always gets native English-speakers to review Primal Fear lyrics before he goes into the studio, to check for errors. Now, since I can feel a sarcastic remark coming on here (heh), obviously this may not mean that the lyrics are incredibly deep and insightful, but at least it means there are no bizarre, easily-avoidable grammatical errors.
The strangest example of this is on the Mental Reservation album by German band Scanner. The lyrics were all written by the main guy behind the band, who is German, and there were some grammatical errors. I mean some really glaring, ridiculous grammatical errors that could have been easily fixed. In general, this would not have been surprising, since the lyrics were written by someone who was not a native English speaker. However, in this case, the vocalist who had just joined the band was FROM ENGLAND! Near as I can figure, this guy either just shut his brain off, somehow managed to keep a straight face, and blithely sang through the lyric sheet he was handed, or the German band leader was a total dick and wouldn't accede to the fixing of these glaring grammatical errors.
given that English is one of the language with the bigest vocabulary, it is relatively sad to see how basic most lyrics are.
BenMech
student of the d'eh
I always presumed that schoolchildren in mainstream Europe were naturally taught to be multilingual, ESPECIALLY English. So, unless the whole philosophy behind a band is the reclamation of an obsolete dead culture, there's no excuse not to use English. Unless you do the Cocteau Twins/Magma thang and INVENT a language to sing in
Jim LotFP
The Keeper of Metal
BenMech said:
Singing in your native language is a reclamation of an obsolete, dead culture?
This makes me wonder how well you have to know a language before you can begin to *think* in that language. Somebody post a link on the subject for the next time I'm on.
BenMech
student of the d'eh
Linguists Sapir and Whorf have written about language and thought. It's scientific, but interesting...well, maybe not on a metal-board...
Jim LotFP said:Singing in your native language is a reclamation of an obsolete, dead culture?
This makes me wonder how well you have to know a language before you can begin to *think* in that language. Somebody post a link on the subject for the next time I'm on.
Heh, I don't have any links, but I have firsthand experience with this. Technically, English is not my first language. I was born in India, and even though my parents moved to the US when I was about 1, they still usually spoke to each other in their native Indian language. Considering that an infant often spends most of his time in the presence of parents, and considering that I started talking when I was about 5 months old, this is the language I first picked up on. Not until I was about 2 - 3 years old, and my exposure to the outside world increased, did I start to hear a lot of English. I've been told that I had some difficulty adjusting at first, but only for a few weeks.
Naturally, English rapidly became the language I started to think in, and by the time I started pre-school, I was completely used to speaking English. Right up through my early 20's, though, I still had regular exposure to my parents speaking their native language, often speaking to me, not just to each other. I never had any problem understanding what they were saying, but if I replied, I would always reply in English... simply because my thoughts were in English, and that's the language I was used to speaking. However, on relatively rare occassions when I was speaking to older relatives who knew very little English, I *had* to speak in their language. I could always do it, but I would invariably speak a little slower, since I would be thinking in English, then have to translate it in my head.
I don't mean, however, that I create a fully-formed English sentence in my head, then laboriously translate every word... it's more like after your brain forms the basic idea of what you're going to say, it then has to send it to another part of your brain to translate it from whatever shorthand the brain uses, into understandable English. In this case, I have to stop the signal from going to the usual English translator, and redirect it towards a much less used and therefore less efficient translator.
On the other hand, my parents grew up in India. They learned English in high school, but didn't speak it on any regular basis until they moved to the US in their mid-to-late 20's. Which means they've been in the US for a solid 35+ years now. They both say that they now think in both languages interspersed with each other. That sounds odd at first, even to me, but it does seem accurate based on their speech... when they are talking to someone who knows both languages, they effortlessly switch back and forth mid-sentence, and often multiple times per sentence, without even thinking about it. A lot of their Indian friends of their generation also do the same thing.
Anyway, I think I'm getting way beyond the scope of the original question you asked, so I better stop here...
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