TBF English is an extremely common second language, so listening to English-language music as a German or French person doesn’t have quite the same impact as an American listening to German- or French-language music.
A couple of my favorite bands are Electric Callboy and Landmvrks who are from Germany and France respectively. They both sing in english (although Landmvrks does have a smattering of french here and there) and i can only assume that the higher likelyhood of commercial success in english markets factors in to why they dont sing in their native languages.
So a contributing factor may be not many native english bands would choose to produce music in another language but the opposite is true so the music pool of english is even more saturated.
Yeah, another example of this is Tom’s Diner by AnnenMayKantereit, which ended up pretty popular in the US, at least in online circles, and the majority of their music is in German.
That’s definitely a thing, too. I can only imagine how bad it must be in smaller nations like Netherlands or Czechia, considering how much fewer native speakers they have compared to German or French.
TBF English is an extremely common second language, so listening to English-language music as a German or French person doesn’t have quite the same impact as an American listening to German- or French-language music.
Du hast…
I do listen to Rammstein despite being mostly only English speaking. I’m picking up more and more of the the lyrics in the songs and what they mean.
They also play with words a lot, which is lost in translation. For example, in Du Hast, he begins saying:
Du hast (you have)
Du hast mich (you have […] me)
Which, to a native speaker, hearing it for the first time, may very well be interpreted as:
Du hasst (you hate)
Du hasst mich (you hate me)
But then he continues:
Du hast mich gefragt (you have asked me)
So when the verb “gefragt” arrives, the interpretation suddenly changes from “you hate me” to “you have asked me”. Which is cool.
This is just one tiny example - Rammstein lyrics are full of wordplay that only works in German. It would take forever to explain it all.
Yeah and my German is nowhere near good enough to pick up that kind of wordplay. I knew about that one, but only from reading about it.
It is interesting that I’ll be listening to a song I’ve heard many times before, and suddenly be like, oh I suddenly understand that lyric!
The song came out in '97. Either that is a really deep song, or you may need some help with your German…
I’m not listening to just Du Hast. Do you see where I said “songs” as in plural?
A couple of my favorite bands are Electric Callboy and Landmvrks who are from Germany and France respectively. They both sing in english (although Landmvrks does have a smattering of french here and there) and i can only assume that the higher likelyhood of commercial success in english markets factors in to why they dont sing in their native languages.
So a contributing factor may be not many native english bands would choose to produce music in another language but the opposite is true so the music pool of english is even more saturated.
Yeah, another example of this is Tom’s Diner by AnnenMayKantereit, which ended up pretty popular in the US, at least in online circles, and the majority of their music is in German.
That’s definitely a thing, too. I can only imagine how bad it must be in smaller nations like Netherlands or Czechia, considering how much fewer native speakers they have compared to German or French.