Anyone regularly listen to music in a language you don't know?

ic1male

ic1male

ic1male

Caporegime
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A few years ago I began learning Mandarin Chinese and found some songs on YouTube. Then I watched some sort of music concert in Hong Kong which featured Brown Eyed Girls, who are from South Korea. And that was that. They got me hooked on to Kpop. It's about the only music I listen to these days. And I can't understand a jot of what they're saying (apart from the regular insertion of English which often is just weird and out of the blue).


So I was wondering do any of you out there regularly follow artist(s) who sing in a language you don't understand.
 
Japanese / Korean / Taiwanese / Chinese post rock / math rock and shoegaze stuff.

I don't understand a single word of what they're singing about at all. But it doesn't matter. Sigur Ros is one of my favourite bands and Jonsi sings in a completely made up language, using his voice more as another instrument than to convey words of any meaning.

Hell, I listen to a lot of thrash, sludge, drone metal and grindcore with people singing in English and most of the time you can't understand a word of what they're saying (or growling / squealing) and can only decipher the lyrics by looking at the booklet that came with the CD.
 
I must admit I listen to a fair number of Japanese anime OST tracks, my brother jokes about the fact that whenever he's in my car and puts the stereo on it'll be Bubblegum Crisis again* :)

Having said that with a lot of the tracks whilst I don't understand the language, I do know the rough lyrics.

But as Castiel says, music is pretty much universal, and I sort of got into the OST's in part because the vocals are often very good and the music catchy.

*I don't think he's ever caught me singing along (very badly) to it though.
 
I mostly listen to foreign music ... think of it this way; think how bad music lyrics are in general ... it actually improves a lot of songs if you can't understand what is being sung ...


 
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Yeah....quite a bit actually.
Japanese (originally anime OST's but expanded to Jpop and Kpop etc), Korean, Chinese, German, Latin, Norwegian, Finnish, Russian and in all likelihood some other languages too.

Got bored of 'British music' years ago, plus my music preference towards industrial/synthpop/gothic/EBM/folk rock is more popular in mainland Europe than the UK so is often foreign language too. (I'm another Eluveitie and BEG fan) And as I like anime I seemed to gravitate to Japanese music and then Chinese/Korean stuff.

Unheilig - German

Korpiklaani - Finnish

Denki Groove - Japanese
 
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i listen to Melissa Horn, a Swedish singer.

Not a clue what she is singing about, but i love her voice :)
 
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