While I love the song and the singer from that thread’s OP, I have to admit that as far as I can tell from online lyric translations, the song is just about as incomprehensible to native speakers.
First verse:
Dazzled by the night with mortal lights,
to graze cars, eyes like pinheads,
I waited for you a hundred years in the streets in black and white;
You came whistling
Oh, I’ve been listening to that a lot lately. Very cool earworm. Did you know there are multiple live versions on YouTube and yet another on a live recording of the Newport Festival? The best, IMO, is the first one he recorded in 1931. I read the other day that it was the first thing he recorded at that session.
I speak German but still. This needs to be up here .
Apparently this is a favourite of Mutti Merkel:
That’s one I came in to mention. Don’t know that it’s a favorite, but I love the idea of it.
Two that I don’t think have been mentioned:
Håll dej till höger, Svensson The title translates to “Keep to the right, Svensson”, and it was released in the year that Sweden transitioned to driving on the right side of the road. From what I’ve found online, the lyrics have little to do with driving and may be related to Swedish slang “going left” to mean cheating on your wife.
Guten Tag I was working in Germany about 20 years ago, and as I was walking by a co-worker’s office I heard some music. He told me it was a band called Wir Sind Helden. I picked up one of their CDs, good stuff.
Fairuz - Al Bosta
20,000 Baci is my jam.
A favorite by Louis Prima. Keely Smith’s stone-faced act is the perfect accent to Prima’s over the top antics. I still have no idea what the song is about.
I am compelled to make a very late, really meta entry to the list.
Here’s a group that uses a language made up by themselves, so almost no one understands the lyrics!
Čankišou, pronounced chahn-key-show, is from the Czech Republic. My faves from them are Sham Sut, Zuha and Bwindiorhans.org.
Here’s another happy-sounding song in Spanish about a sad childhood. A child talks to his cuckoo clock, about how his parents and siblings ignore or abandon him, and he’s afraid of the dark, but he tells it matter-of-factly. Good song from a late-90s Mexican album with several other good ones (the rocker “Déjame Entrar,” and the exquisite power ballad “No Ha Parado de Llover”). The lead singer’s voice reminds me of Sting’s.
The Monkees - Riu Chiu (Official HD Music Video) - YouTube
Surprisingly, very well worth a listen.
The Eurovision Song Contest is of course a more than 60 year old gold mine for weird music in languages not normally heard in popular music. Mostly, we point and laugh, but every now and then something comes along that transcends the dreck that is par for the course. Yes, this is schmaltzy, but I still find it beautiful.
I used to own a CD called The Moon and the Banana Tree. It was a compilation of various musicians from Madagascar. I loved every song.
I just heard this in a movie I was watching. So beautiful. La Mer.
Bobby Darin had a hit with the Americanized version - though I don’t think the translation was accurate.
Years ago I went to Vegas to see O, in which they played this song.
So much passion in this song. Have no idea what it’s about but I feel heartache when I listen to it.
I like Rammstein’s “Du Hast”.
Charles Trenet! I love that song! La Mer
I remember it from a movie too. Can’t recall which one I think it was on TCM.
Also a favorite from Ismael Lo with Marianne Faithful. Without Blame
I love Charles Trenet singing any song.
The songs that came immediately to mind have already been mentioned (99 Luft Balloons, Ode to Joy), but I love all the Pennywhistlers’ songs not in English, and all the Gaelic songs by The Fisher Family.
I recently rediscovered Les Double Six, a French vocalese group from the early 60s lead and aranged by Mimi Perrin. They only operated for a few years but their work is fascinating. I can understand a bit of French, but this is so fast and rhythmic that I can’t really catch any of it. Here’s two songs in a rare recorded live example, but I could have picked any number of songs.
Sorta cheating, because I now understand more Spanish than I did when I first discovered the album, but I love Gloria Estefan’s Spanish-language album Mi Tierra. Lots of great songs on that record - “Tus Ojos”, “La Tierra”, “Si Señor” - but if I had to pick a favorite, it’s the beautifully melancholic "“Volverás”:
I was searching YouTube for Gaelic mouth music once, and I stumbled across Rhiannon Giddens, singing “S’iomadh Rid”', a pair of traditional wedding songs. How an African-American banjo player and singer from North Carolina came to sing in Gaelic, I know not; but I’m glad I found this.
To go really far afield, the Faeroese singer Eivør Pálsdottír has a haunting, mostly a capella song called “Tròdlabùndin”. It’s amazing, the sounds she can make with her voice, and you can see her having a lot of fun with it in this performance.
One of her friends is a expert in Gaelic. Not naming them b/c internet, but I assume this is how it happened (I know the friend but have never met the singer.)
Celtic, but not Gaelic…
