Want to know if anyone knows such artists. This post does not carry any educational meaning rather providing interesting statistics.
So here's my list:
1. Madeleine Peyroux -- born in Atlanta GA and sings songs in French 2. Gypsy Kings -- they're mostly from France and speak French while singing in Spanish. 3. Joe Dassin -- born and in USA and all of his songs are sang in French.
Magma - sing in their own language. what is the story with Joe Dassin: he does seem to sing in his native language, no accent I can pick up with French being my second foreign language (English being third)...
Most opera singers are are proficient (if not fluent) in 3-4 languages; typically Italian, German, French and English. Many European artists are fluent in more. My younger daughter sings opera and took three weeks of diction lessons last year before performing
Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen in Czech.
Most pop artists that sing in a non-native language simply learn (read) the words phonetically.
Said at the risk of being perceived as racist, the form of English spoken by many Rappers differs quite a bit from that of Anglos in the U.S. of A. Not quite a different language, but pretty darn close. I axed (;-) my sister why that is (her daughter has a half-white, half-black daughter, and two 3/4's black, 1/4 white granddaughters), and she said it's a cultural thing.
When I was in London in 1982, I went to a large farmer's market on a Sunday morning. I was amazed by how many different British accents I heard---some of them completely unrecognizable as being of the English language, and amused to hear the British blacks speaking with some of them.
Franco Mussida (lead vocals) and the rest of PFM. Italian in early versions and English in later. I've heard that the lyrics aren't even remotely similar, but have no way to know. That all changed with the Chocolate Kings / Jet Lag releases.
Nat King Cole! I can remember as a young lad seeing his albums in a record store on 14th St. (NYC) in at least 15 different languages - I guess he really was the KING!
This happens a lot in Japan. I've heard movie/anime soundtracks with songs in English, Gaelic, etc. They are quite cross-cultural when it comes to their music.
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