The Lennigrad Cowboys are a Finnish band that sometimes works with a Russian military choir. Here’s a video of them doing Sweet Home Alabama.
Nobody tell Cowboy Bill Watts about this. He’d probably never forgive me.
Leningrad Cowboys Sweet Home Alabama is another Finno fave!
beaten…
Was going to mention the Leningrad Cowboys, though I’ve not heard that one–but Delilah is a classic, as is Those Were the Days (bonus: It’s a Finnish band, playing in a “Russian” style (with the Red Army Choir, no less) covering an English song that is itself a “cover” of a Russian folk song.)
Not foreign exactly, but Devotchka’s cover of Venus in Furs is worth checking out. If you insist on an actual foreign language being involved, there’s The Ukrainians cover of the same.
There have been plenty of Israeli covers of classic rock and jazz songs (some with translated lyrics, some with original). Here are some non-ironic ones from major stars:
Gidi Gov doing Moondance and Whiskey in the Jar.
Arik Einstein doing Mellow Yellow and Dayton, Ohio - 1903.
Shlomo Artzi doing When You Are a King.
Aviv Geffen doing A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.
Black Sabbath’s Paranoid in a German Schlager version by Cindy und Bert… actually sounds quite nice. Link.
Hijack - it’s pretty amazing, the revolution Youtube has made over the past 7 years. When this thread started, people just listed names of songs, as there was basically nowhere to link to. Now, if you want to hear a rare version of a song, all you have to do is click.
Missed the edit window. I remember that having a lot more German in it.
I thought it was funny when my wife told me the Chinese version of “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man after Midnight)” was about the wind blowing through the trees instead of a woman looking for a one-night stand. According to Wikipedia, they translate it as “Annoying Autumn Wind”…
Yannick’s French rap version of the Four Seasons December 1963 (Oh, What A Night) is absolutely amazing.
There was a great CD put out by ARK21 (Miles Copeland’s label) of Police covers by Latin American artists. My favorite track is “Traeme la Noche” (Bring on the Night) by Gustavo Cerati. It even features Andy Summers (Police guitarist)… his playing might top his on the original.
Nina Hagen’s “TV Glotzer” is a German adaptation of “White Punks on Dope.”
“Mulholland Drive” famously has a Spanish language version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying”.
Here’s a clip of the oldie “I Will Follow Him” being sung in four different languages.
A rather touching German version of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man”.
This is still in English, but an undeniably foreign (and poorly rhymed!) version of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA”: God Bless You, Canada.
And since I’m getting far afield from “rock” anyway, if you know the old Disney songs, you can find all sorts of foreign language versions online. The Bear Necessities in German Part of Your World in Italian I’ve Got No Strings in Dutch
I like thisone even better again.
Also ‘‘Heroes’’ in German.
A few more:
