Foreign lyrics
 

What's your stance on music with lyrics in a language you don't understand?

I think about 90% of lyrics are terrible anyway with the remainder being mostly meh,
so I really enjoy not being able to understand them.

I used to think no way, like watching a subtitled film, but now I've listened to a few artistes, such as Saratoga, Tierra Santa and others, even Josh Groban, and I find it's absolutely no trouble to listen to a foreign language. It does feel like I'm missing out a little though, when I don't know what the lyric is about.

Good to know that. Especially since I rec'd you some foreign stuff. (But that's on hold anyway.)

One might be missing out on something not understanding the lyrics, but one would be missing out on infinitely more rejecting all foreign music out of hand.

(Oh, and the true connoisseur watches foreign movies only with subtitles.:pimp:)

That's exactly how I feel too. Plus, I hear English all day long every day in my life, so I like the variety of hearing other languages when I can. And one of my musical pet peeves is bands from non-English speaking countries who feel obligated to sing in English in order to, I presume, be more commercially viable. Not only do I not want to hear your shitty lyrics, Sepultura, but they'd probably be less shitty if you used the language you were most comfortable with.

Yeah, this often produces especially sucky results.
And those accents... Singing with an accent can, in a select few cases, add a certain character to the singing, but it usually doesn't and just sounds awful and cringeworthy.

While I love music from all over the world and much of it I don't understand, I always feel a very awesome emotional response when I do understand something in a different language. For example, I've been listening to Spanish & Japanese music since high school, but lately if I revisit some old tracks, I pick up more than I did before due to experience, and it is very very very gratifying and adds layers of depth to the song that were not there before. I think understanding the lyrics is important to me. But that's not to say I can't love a song with vocals that don't mean anything to me.

Take Cirque du Soleil for example. A lot of their vocal songs on circus soundtracks are in "Cirquish" - a nonsense language that doesn't have meaning at all. Very beautiful stuff nonetheless.

The speaking and singing of languages I don't know actually sound like music to me in and of themselves - they're an added feature to the music I love listening to.

Accents don't bother me at all really, I'd just rather hear someone use their native language.

When listening to romance, germanic or slavic languages I'm also always happy to pick up a word or sentence I understand here and there.
But are you are really able to pick up japanese words just by being an attentive listener? Or did you study the language a little? I'm always completely lost when listening to japanese.

Totally agree with you. Some languages sound awesome and create a unique atmosphere.

I've heard some german and russian bands (don't remember the names) trying to sing english where it was just horrible. I'm not that sensitive to accents, but it made me die a little inside. On the other hand the rest of the music wasn't particularly good either.

It's odd how you can listen to some songs ("L'ELite" by Trust, that "Volare" one, anything in Spanish, Italian or French by Josh Groban) and you can still get the idea behind the lyric, even if you haven't the foggiest what they're saying. I suppose it adds an air of mystery to it.