Awesome. 
And of course all the Brits will remember the Fast Show’s Channel 9 news:
Scorcio!
Thanks!
Did you happen to run across any Youtube videos where he was speaking English? I didn’t, so I just assumed he didn’t know any.
Little tidbit of information. Adriano Celentano claims to have invented rap, of all things, with this song. I’ll have to dig for a cite, tho.
‘‘What do you say we make apple juice and fax it to each other’’ 
Holy crap that was weird.
That is a catchy little song. This whole thread is a kind of a head trip.
Ok, following all the links on youtube, I have seen some hilarious attempts at English by non-English speakers. So funny, oh my God, why does it tickle me so.
After one of the videos of fake English gibberish, one of the commenters said
"lol. as a hilarious prank, i’m gonna teach my 1 yr old this instead of english! she’s gonna be so punked. "
Why would there be videos of Celentano speaking English on Youtube ? I doubt there’s any of, say, the Cano brothers, both of whom do speak English but whose career has never involved the English-language market (their group Mecano was one of the biggest Spanish-language hit-rollers of the 80s and 90s, they’ve got one of those “come, you already know all the songs” musicals - noisy link).
I’ve seen more than one interview with foreign artists who speak Spanish but not enough for an interview, too. They can get a hotel room, food, directions; they can’t discuss the subtleties of their work. In some cases, they can get that subtle if they’ve been speaking Spanish lately, but not if they’re in the middle of a promotional tour through half of Europe. Viggo Mortensen’s Spanish is native, but I once saw an interview with him on Spanish TV in English, under “haven’t spoken Spanish in yoinks” circumstances; when he did speak in Spanish, it was with a heavy “foreign” accent which he didn’t have after spending a few months in Spain.
Nava, Asereje is one of my favorite guilty pleasure songs, but I never realized it was supposed to sound like English. It just sounds like gobbledeygook.
The beginning of “Rappers’ Delight” hardly sounds like English either. I could tell right away what they were doing with "Aserejé (back when it came out) since the cadence of the two songs is similar.
I don’t know, but you said…
…so I figured you must have heard him speaking English, and that Youtube would be the most likely source. Unless you’ve seen him on TV, or know him personally or something.
I can do that in a few languages, but I don’t consider myself to “speak” all those languages. I guess it’s a matter of a choice of phrasing.
That’s a logical assumption. As an example, this is a rare brief clip of Ofra Haza speaking English and apparantly her speaking English was quite a surprise to even huge, know-everything-about-her fans.
Can’t help thinking of the wonderful Benny Lava.
I think it’s just following in the footsteps of the greats and a musical genre stylization. For example, That’s Amore or Mambo Italiano are similar examples from the American perspective.
Although, if the lyrics are meaningless, then that’s still sort of similar to opera parodies I have heard that involves the singer/comedian substituting an Italian menu for the real lyrics… “Spaghetti Bolognese, Risotto Milanese, Calamari fritti, Baaaaakked Ziti!”
This is what the Germans think the Italians sound like (Sicilians):
Hot Nights in Palermo
And this is what The Americans sound like to the Germans:
But is this really what the singer thought Americans sound like, or is it what he believes the Brits sound like? Personally I’m of the opinion that the singer was taught English by a teacher very specifically from England and perhaps influenced by the BBC, and that the song is really in a dialect of British English. It’s obviously modeled after Brit Pop (sounds like Tom Jones). My cite is 14 seconds into the video when he pronounces “Prisencolinen Sinainacusol” with a decidedly British accent as the headmaster.
Well, it’s complicated, because if Adriano Celentano is imitating Tom Jones, Tom Jones imitated American singers like Elvis Presley. I hear a drawl in a lot of Celentano’s vowels, meaning he’s imitating an American blues style.
An a very old example of the genre: Dutchman singing “Italian”: