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Post by mrholmes on Jul 24, 2015 5:31:31 GMT -6
Dear RGO.
Today I had to prove, in front of a label manager, that native speakers only get 50% of the lyrics of what the artist sings.
I took a native US American, he is from Boston.
I did play back the mix, and asked him to write down the first three lines.
It was some kind of funny because what he was hearing, was not the meaning of the lyrics.
So now the label is saying that its not that important.
I advised the label to book some articulation lessons, otherwise native speakers do not understand the meaning of the songs.
Now I am interested in this articulation question:
How often do you, as native speakers, get English lyrics wrong?
I think a rate of 50% is bad.
Whats your opinion on the topic?
Holmes....
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Post by jazznoise on Jul 24, 2015 6:05:12 GMT -6
This is a real problem in Asia, where I was. Basically all of the English was cringe-bad-awful.
I would understand 95% of lyrics. Very rarely big songs come out where partials lines are misunderstood - Eiffel 65's I'm Blue for instance. From Wiki:
"The chorus contains the phrase "I'm blue da ba dee da ba di", which was misunderstood by some as "I'm blue and I'm in need of a guy". This misperception caused some to think the song was about homosexuality. Or jokingly though as "I'm blue If I were green I would die". [27] The line has also been misunderstood for "I'm blue in Aberdeen I will die", causing some to think that the song was about suicide."
That Pavement song Cut Your Hair it always sounds like Korea and not "career". Hendrix's famous "Excuse me while I kiss the sky". It's pretty infrequent.
The only way to convince the label is probably to do market resource with native speakers. But let's see how far you get spending money on that!
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Post by mrholmes on Jul 24, 2015 7:02:58 GMT -6
This is a real problem in Asia, where I was. Basically all of the English was cringe-bad-awful. I would understand 95% of lyrics. Very rarely big songs come out where partials lines are misunderstood - Eiffel 65's I'm Blue for instance. From Wiki: "The chorus contains the phrase "I'm blue da ba dee da ba di", which was misunderstood by some as "I'm blue and I'm in need of a guy". This misperception caused some to think the song was about homosexuality. Or jokingly though as "I'm blue If I were green I would die". [27] The line has also been misunderstood for "I'm blue in Aberdeen I will die", causing some to think that the song was about suicide." That Pavement song Cut Your Hair it always sounds like Korea and not "career". Hendrix's famous "Excuse me while I kiss the sky". It's pretty infrequent. The only way to convince the label is probably to do market resource with native speakers. But let's see how far you get spending money on that! It is some times frustrating to discuss about such things, because it should be clear - the lyrics are the message. I had the feeling they just do not care. They cared about the context and now they do not care for the right articulation, which does not makes sense to me. |
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Post by gouge on Jul 24, 2015 7:05:04 GMT -6
you generally can't hear the lyrics over a cranked amp.
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Post by mrholmes on Jul 24, 2015 7:28:12 GMT -6
you generally can't hear the lyrics over a cranked amped. I am not a native speaker myself, can you elaborate this one please? You mean the more processing is on the lead vocals the lesser we can understand it? |
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Post by M57 on Jul 24, 2015 7:40:08 GMT -6
Of course, there's a word for when native speakers mishear a lyric. It's called a Mondegreen. There are many commonly shared mondegreens. For instance, Hendrix's Purple Haze Lyric, 'scuse me while I kiss the sky', is commonly heard as 'scuse me as I kiss this guy.'
I can't understand most contemporary rap lyrics because they are so littered with regional and cultural related colloquialisms mixed in with the occasional nonsense words. Conversely, some of them really shouldn't be that hard to understand because they like to use the F-bomb on every forth or fifth word. But seriously, the reality is that many singers have vocal affectations, which are purposeful in many cases (though not always) and part of their signature sound.
And really? - for T-40 play, does it matter if they can't understand the lyric? OK, getting the hook right is a plus, but sometimes I think it's a game. Some sing the wrong words and then get to argue about what the right ones are - It's like a rite of passage in the sub-culture of that musical genre.
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Post by gouge on Jul 24, 2015 7:53:58 GMT -6
you generally can't hear the lyrics over a cranked amped. I am not a native speaker myself, can you elaborate this one please? You mean the more processing is on the lead vocals the lesser we can understand it? live rock is a point in case where the lyrics are barely understandable at all.
cranked amps, poor acoustics and an sm58 distorting all mask the lyric. but we can still enjoy the song. taking it further, if we know it well enough we hear each word in complete clarity even though it's just noise.
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Post by mrholmes on Jul 24, 2015 9:23:54 GMT -6
Some sing the wrong words and then get to argue about what the right ones are - It's like a rite of passage in the sub-culture of that musical genre. |
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Post by tonycamphd on Jul 24, 2015 10:04:53 GMT -6
It's more about the rhytm and phrasing than anything else, very, very few native speakers can rattle off lyrics, a 50% rate of understanding lyrics sounds about right to me.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2015 10:43:20 GMT -6
This topic is very interesting for me, too.
I do have a pretty obvious german accent, because i never lived in an english speaking country and my spoken english is pretty much only work-related and most of my english conversation was with other non-native speakers around the world, mostly from europe, africa, middle-east and asia/esp. india.
I am pretty insecure writing lyrics in english language and even more performing them, i just become aware of this lately, since it seems we have to do vocals on our own with our little personal musical project. (2 younger female singers jumped off, most probably due to studio anxiety :-P)
I'm very interested in your opinions about this.
How do you percieve vocal performances from non-native speakers from europe, especially germany? What bothers you most, if it does at all? What are, in your opinion, the most obvious problems (*cough*, besides the 'th'/'s' problem)?
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Post by mrholmes on Jul 24, 2015 11:06:49 GMT -6
Pepsi test for those who never read the lyrics..... write down the first verse I am prety sure Marian has a strong accent for native speakers.
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Post by b1 on Jul 24, 2015 11:22:40 GMT -6
Pepsi test for those who never read the lyrics..... write down the first verse I am prety sure Marian has a strong accent for native speakers. It works for me. In a mix like this I don't think a lot of people worry about the words too much unless the lyrics are available... did I see one of the guys from A Flock Of Seagulls? This reminds me of a comedian talking about Steve Miller's words and how hard it is to sometimes understand lyrics. When Miller sang "big ol' jet airliner", the guy substituted: "bingo jet had a light on". |
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Post by jazznoise on Jul 24, 2015 11:30:53 GMT -6
Here we go:
Let's start in style, let's dance for a while
Heaven come wait, we're only watching the sky
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst
Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?
Let it be noted that there is bands I'm a fan of whose English is very poor, some singers like Satomi Matsuzaki just always sound a little off. But in general I prefer when singers stick to the language they're most comfortable in . It can feel a little 'off' to hearing a Dutch girl say "I can feel it in the air tonight" or whatever.
Lots of kids were I was would listen to music however. We're not exactly a Mecca for culture, so whatever comes in is basically fine by us. It had good effects - many Rammestein fans I knew as a kid were pretty shit hot in their German class (and also tried to sneak Rammstein lyrics into their homework when possible).
The flipside put me off Mademoiselle K, actually. Her French lyrics were really raw and interesting and hearing these expressions of angst through a different language was interesting - you'd learn to translate it and that'd be that. Even though her grammar and accent are really great when she moved over to English, it just didn't do it for me anymore.
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Post by M57 on Jul 24, 2015 11:37:16 GMT -6
I can't remember a working GB type band that I've ever been in where we didn't morph lyrics on purpose - No one EVER caught on. We'd call 'em by the Mondegreen so to speak. I was in an acapella doo-wap group in the early 80s so.. "Return to Sender" became "Return the Fender," which eventually would be called for as "Fender." Sing it with your best Elvis into an SM58 and no one questions it.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2015 11:49:24 GMT -6
Rammstein is an interesting example.
Because of their music genre, it is an aesthetical decision and value to exaggerate german pronounciation partly up to beeing obnoxius and ridiculous. This makes it easier for non-native german speakers to understand and transscript the lyrics. No way germans speak anything like this or what i hear in Hollywood movies in the original audio streams as supposed to be "german" language. The german comedian Michael Mittermeier once told the anecdote that he watched one of the "Die Hard" movies while he was in the US and wondered what language the evil guys were speaking. He thought it was romanian or something similar, before he noticed after more than an hour that it was supposed to be german, his native language...LOL.
German is a very hard language to write lyrics in for contemporary rock and pop music. It seems to be much harder to make it sound musical and meaningful at the same time. English seems to be much easier for that...
On the other hand, writing lyrics in another than your native language makes it more difficult to say exactly what you want to say...
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Post by mrholmes on Jul 24, 2015 11:58:51 GMT -6
Here we go: Let's start in style, let's dance for a whileHeaven come wait, we're only watching the skyHoping for the best but expecting the worstAre you gonna drop the bomb or not?100% except come should be can. So mh may I worry too much.... maybe I should agree and let him sing with his accent... I just thought do it right if you do it. |
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Post by b1 on Jul 24, 2015 12:22:14 GMT -6
I listened again and the best I could figure out was European, but no particular dialect came to mind really when I listened the first time. I don't think it hindered the message at all. It may have added to the charm, if anything.
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Post by M57 on Jul 24, 2015 13:25:30 GMT -6
It seems there's a subtle distinction to be made between charm, affectation, and awkward pronunciation, and the decision hangs on the proclivities of the oft-fickle native speaking public. Yeah the European 'th'/s' are tough to ignore. I hang out on a song-writer's forum where there are a number of non-native writers/singers. Some of them have very good voices, but I struggle to enjoy English being sung with an non-native accent, and I have to work to overcome my predispositions in that regard. In fact, come to think of it, I often struggle to enjoy English when it's sung with ANY accent that varies too far from General American, not surprisingly with many of the accents associated with the British invasion being the exception to the rule. I know there are a lot of Country AND Western musicians here (sorry, it's one of my favorite Blues's Bros. jokes), but I have to admit I have a tough time working through the drawl in all but the very best of songs. OMG! ..I'm a SNOB! Worse, I may be the first to be "Banned from RealGear" ..or has that already happened? |
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Post by b1 on Jul 24, 2015 13:44:56 GMT -6
Sometimes I sing a song I like with an extra emphasis upon the same accent as the original foreign accent.
BTW, consider yerself bunned, lol...
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Post by jazznoise on Jul 24, 2015 13:59:03 GMT -6
When Irish people try to sing in American General or South British accents I tend to rail on them pretty hard. It's one thing to change languages for artistic effect, it's another to be so ashamed of your own background you try to cover it up.
I guess I'd feel the same if I lived in Vancouver and my country-mad friends were singing like they were born and bred Nashville kids. Some amount of inflection is inevitable - but there's embracing a style and then there's rejecting your heritage. Bono, if he ever spared us anything, spared us that.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2015 18:03:34 GMT -6
It's maybe a stereotype, but i often read and heard, that especially germans try to be very correct whenever they communicate in a foreign language. This may do more harm than good, because you can not concentrate on what your counterpart is trying to say to you. While i worked for motorola, i noticed that alot of foreign speakers from other countries struggle more with english language, especially the french, italian and spanish native speakers and nearly all southeast asian people. Indian english is a completely different story. They often speak very fast and self-confident, but can be extremely hard to understand because of the strong accents...
Btw, the nicest english accent i heard so far is portuguese. Everybody wanted to phone with the lovely female portuguese service manager. :-)
Very musical!
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Post by gouge on Jul 24, 2015 20:44:54 GMT -6
It's funny that when I read everyone's posts the voice in my head is Australian.
From now on I'll read every post with an accent.
It will be like a cross between monty python and farty towers.
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Post by swurveman on Jul 26, 2015 11:28:29 GMT -6
I think the amount of lyrics I understand depends on the genre. I probably understand less than 40% of rap. I probably understand around 70% of country, but not all of it in a first listen because of the southern accents and my not totally being up on modern country culture. I understand most of modern pop, probably because the vocals are so up front in the mix and so simple.
My feeling about it is that you can have a great groove and vibe in a song and get away with weak or unintelligible lyrics. If the groove and vibe suck, no lyric is going to save it.
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Post by jazznoise on Jul 26, 2015 13:55:28 GMT -6
To elaborate further - as an Irishman I probably sit on the extreme of what is considered a 'Native Accent' as we have some of the most eccentric pronunciations. Asuch I have a fairly wide tolerance of what is 'intelligible'. Plus I have worked the last year teaching English in Japan part time. Here's s
We mix a lot of Irish with our English, leading to weird grammar and borrowed words. It's a whole academic field, our mutilation of English! Hiberno-English I think they call it.
Anyway here's an example of an extremely rehearsed Irish person using English with a very American (to me) inflection:
And here's an example where the international audience is completely ignored:
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