Oh man I will never forget seeing him when he was fronting Mano Negra, opening for Iggy Pop. That was truly something else. He was very much into stage diving at the time so I got a few bear hugs from him for being the big guy he chose to land on several times.
I don’t know any Japanese, but I like a lot of Kyu Sakamoto’s songs. This is probably my favorite.
Wow! My husband and I have followed him since those days. Puta’s fever ftw!
You’re right that each listener must consider “alternate meanings of each word or phrase,” and while I don’t, and wouldn’t, disagree with your interpretation of the phrase you quoted, I wouldn’t have interpreted it that way at all. Nor would I have understood his lyrics in the way that Anderson himself explains them in interviews.
My longstanding view towards Yes lyrics is that they evoke rather than connote. I think they end up being a Rorschach test for each listener, and can bear nearly any possible interpretation, and probably a few impossible ones, too.
I think Anderson’s lyrics are in many ways similar to Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, a book I have never read, and do not intend ever to read, even though I did closely study Ulysses in college, and have read most of his short works. I hope Anderson would take that as a compliment.
The big hits aren’t nearly always the best, most worthwhile songs on any given album.
Probably the majority for me: New World Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Hindi and related, Greek, Italian, and many more.
I listen to anime songs that I’ve liked, often having viewed their shortened version with subtitles. So I have a general idea of what the song is about. If I find a band I like, I’ll sometimes listen to one of their albums or playlists.
Plug! My anime playlist at Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0p4HanuSSzYe1MBfbyPOIa
An older one at tidal:
I also endorse Sony’s FirstTake Channel, which gained some popularity during COVID:
Here’s one of their earlier performances, featuring LiSA, garnering 1.5 million likes and a number of reviews by various English speaking vocal coaches:
Yes, I play instrumental music as background music. Foreign language music is more distracting than that, but not as distracting English language music. I also find that Japanese language music can cross the “Can listen to it” threshold. As always your mileage varies. Fun fact: Japan is the second largest music market in the world. (No, I don’t remember what that means.)
I speak pretty poor French, but I sometimes listen to music from Quebec.
Most recent song was Bacon en bedaine (translation: bacon while topless)
I listen to Il Volo - I adore all their albums, in Italian, though I have no idea what they’re singing.
As I noted earlier, I find English vocal music to be somewhat distracting, instrumental music typically less so, vocal music in a foreign language somewhere in between. I calibrate what I listen to depending upon my activity: ambient gets a lot of play time.
For those who enjoy world music, I recommend the global channel at listener suported Radio Paradise:
Only three years late answering this.
Very funny. Saudade is more of a feeling than just a single descriptive. It’s pretty much a state of mind for the Portuguese, longing for the past as well as sadness for things lost. It figures strongly in Fado music in Portugal, which was originally a song style popular among prostitutes and poor people. Amalia Rodrigues elevated the music to new heights and she became wildly popular until her death. We saw her sing when we lived in Lisbon.
No, not really. I remember dialing up a handful of Blackpink videos on YouTube a little while ago when I wanted to finally investigate what the whole K-Pop phenomenon was all about. The dancing was pretty terrific, but not being able to understand what they were singing greatly limited my interest in exploring further.
And for a completely UNcurated experience, enjoy the amazing Radiogarden site – at least a thousand radio stations live streaming worldwide, witha Google Earth-like interface:
Cool website! Thanks for the link.
You’re welcome! I use it as an assignment for my World Cultural Geography students (college undergrads, but most of them lack basic knowledge of the world). The have to listen to several stations in a few countries of their choosing, and write a mini-essay on how musical styles (and languages) can be local, or generic pop (with manly US/Western roots)…or surprises, like reggae in Nepal or whatever. Cultural diffusion, colonialism…
Excellent question.. I listen to more songs than albums, but there is one.
Nino Ferrer - Blanat