Song of the Day

Archive for the ‘Foreign Language’ Category

MARTERIA feat. Peter Fox Sekundenschlaf from Storz & Escherich on Vimeo.

German rapper Marteria (aka Marsimoto) released his first album in 2007 but has been touring as a singer performance artist since at least 2002. His music may not be so well known in the US because it is in German, but this is great stuff! The music video in itself is a huge production feat, but the song in its own right is colossal, heavy, complex, and intelligent.

Listen to more music by Marteria at his official website.

Buy Song: We No Speak Americano – Single at iTunes

I wanted to post two other videos to show how this song came to be, but instead I’ll just give you their links. You’ll know what I mean in a second. First of all this song has hit the top of the charts in something like 15 countries already, but most Americans probably haven’t heard it, despite having over 10 million views. Ok, I’ll admit that less than 50% of Americans even use YouTube. Regardless, I do enjoy this song and that’s why it’s here. The video that I posted is interesting, although because I saw a different video for it first I’m a little biased towards the other one. Anyway, here’s the story.

Yolanda Be Cool is a band out of Australia, that apparently has only released three songs. Two in 2009, and this song in 2010. What makes this so funny to me is that, in other words, it’s not really a band, and it’s not even really their music. They got their music from an old 1958 song by the The Carosone Sextet. The song was sampled and recompiled, which is obvious, and they didn’t make the samples, but what makes it funny is that the name of the band was taken from the film Pulp Fiction, (you might recognize it) along with the name of one of the band members. Then on top of that, the video seems to have been knocked off somehow by somebody named Pink Louder or at least the song was used and the video of the original song from 1958 was sampled and re-edited independently. And all of this is compiled by the fact that this song is a chart topping hit right now!!! I find all of this totally hilariously awesome. Not to mention I do enjoy the song and the cheeky punchy beat which makes it sound almost like they are making fun of all those other bands out there that try so hard to be a real band making their own music and touring, when apparently all they have to do is copy some old samples and throw ‘em together in the most minimalist of ways, and Vio-la!!! Ok, so guess what my next spare time hobby’s gonna be…

Anyways, here’s the other two music videos. The first is the re-edited version of the song, and the 2nd is the original song and original video from 1958. Enjoy!

Watch the re-edited version of the original song and video here, it’s my personal favorite, because it’s so much more fun and I just get a kick out of the smiles on their looks on their faces!

And watch the original song and video here.

Here’s a link to the band’s MySpace page.

Buy Song: Alors on danse on iTunes

Stromae being from Belgium sings most of his songs in French for your convenience. By singing in French he allows you to not be bothered by the particulars of the lyrics to the song and encourages you to develop an appreciation for his sound from the sparks and flashes of images that come to your imagination. [Aside: Granted I could say this about any non-English singing artist, I just haven't said it yet so I thought I'd grace your ears with these words here, at this moment, consider yourself blessed (regardless of whether or not I was the person who said you were blessed of course). Moreover, because he repeats the chorus line again and again throughout the song, it's hard for an American not to copy the title of the song and paste it into Google's handy translator to find out what it means; "Then We Dance". But honestly, there are more lyrics to the song than just the chorus, and the phrase "Then We Dance" is general enough of a statement that it allows for plenty of subjective interpretation of the song. If anything you're probably thinking that it's a DANCE song because it's talking about dancing and the melody is highly reminiscent of classic house and dance songs, and has that oh so provocative and popular backup horn. Well, sure it's a dance song... and what? Don't you like Danc'n!?]

I appreciate the double perspective of the video. It’s fun, and I also love that in the video he ends up singing the song to an audience when he’s really drunk, which helped to show me that this song really could be sung when he’s completely smashed out of his mind drunk, which in itself, is worthy of some applause. So kudos to Stromae, the well dressed, skinny French singing, dance producing brand spank’n new artist from Belgium.

Anyway, whatever. Enjoy this Song of the Day. And if you like it you should really go check out his song Te Quiero here.

Click here for Stromae’s website.