Why were her English songs laughed at?
 

In the Instant-mag2 interview that was interpreted by Roman, http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4456
Alizée mentions that the English version of 4 of her songs were made fun of.

("When you published Mes courants électriques, did it seem obvious to record « I'm fed up », « Amelie », « I'm not twenty » et « Youpidoo » in English?
Yes, I recorded those titles at the same time as the original French. This means that we made those versions for nothing since the the foreigners made fun of the songs in English.")

Now I love these songs just the way they are and I'm sure just about every member of this forum does. But we have to remember that there are a lot of people outside of her fan bases, who like her voice and the music, but not quite as much as we do. For these people there needs to be something extra, a story that is understandable and words that are easy to remember. The Beatles showed us long ago that a song doesn't have to be deep or complicated to be a sucess.
One question I have about this is who was she trying to target with these songs in English. She already had successs in England with Moi Lolita, was she trying to expand on that. Was it a case where I believe English is probably the most spoken second language of people in the world and to the potential sales of a good song in English would have been enourmous? I have a feeling it was the U.S. market she was trying to target. Look at a couple of the songs she sang in school
In the summer time, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7jqBHp4YQg
Stand by me, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00LllLZhwq8
Then she also appeared in school in the Wizard of Oz. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQYVqWNa7B
The words were in French in this case, but it goes to show how much she or was it just the school that admired material from the U.S.
She has said that one of her biggest dreams is to perform with Madonna and the best way for that to happen is to have success in the U.S.
Be that as it may, I'd like to take a look of each of her English songs and see what could have been improved on.

One thing we have to keep in mind though is the English version of these songs were released in the second half of 2003. This is during the time France was strongly opposed to the U.S. involvement in the second Iraq war and the resentment the U.S. fealt towards France for this policy was at it's highest. This was when the phrase freedom fries replaced french fries in so many of our restaurants. Even if radio stations in the U.S. thought these were great songs, they might have been afraid to play them for fear of the backlash they would get because of it. So keeping this in mind, let's assume the main reason was that the re-writing and/or interpretation as which ever case may apply, of these songs, was not as good as it could have been.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that although Mylene Farmer is a tremendously talented individual, in my opinion. It seems her one shortcoming was re-writing, of even her own songs from French into English. Again I'd like to quote a line the Instant-mag2 interview ( Mylène Farmer and Laurent Boutonnat never managed to make an impact with the Anglo-Saxon versions of some of their songs like "My mum is wrong" or "My soul is slashed"....................................). So MF had little success with her own songs that she re-wrote into English as well as Alizée's.


One quick note about strong structure which I know little about. From what I've read songs for the most part are made of 2,3 or more melodies, many depending upon how long the song is. Each melody consists of several lines, each melody telling a certain part of the story. Then there is the chorus section, consisting of several lines that gets repeated 2 or 3 times in a song. Of course there are many variations of all this.


The first song I'd like to start with is I'm fed up.
Before getting into the lyrics, let's look at the video part. I think she definitely would've done well with a video wearing the incredibly sexy outfit she wore in so many of her stage performances. Most men in this country would've loved the video part even if they didn't like the music. But I think she would've done even better with the music video she had originally created for this song. I think there would have been so many young girls in this country who could've easily identified with a girl who was "fed up". I think this video would have done really well if they had just given it a chance.


As for the lyrics.

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/1861/imfedup.th.jpg

This song gets in trouble right away
I'm foamely ecstatic. In addition to ecstatic not sounding good, the line sounds way to corny. Except for this one line, the first melody is pretty good.
The next one,
Melon and water. It sounds like she's trying to say something like she's eating peaches and cream or ice cream while she's in the tub, but it comes off sounding strange. Of course this is Mylene Farmer writing these lryics, she might have meant Alizée's melon (s), after all this song was supposedly written in Freudian terms. In this second melody, once again, one line seems to ruin it.
The start of the chorus part of this song is just a mess. Doesn't flow well.
How many people worry about an overstressed uncle.
I'm fed up with creeps crying, just doesn't sound right, plus I've seen a lot of creeps, but they're usually not crying.
The first six lines of this should be totally re-written. The second half isn't bad, but aren't bathing caps kind of passé?

The last short melody is okay

Next song
Youpidoo
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/7...rsionlw.th.jpg

First melody. Give me two................ Two what?
I'll see what I can do............ What you can do with the two things which I didn't know what you were talking about in the first place?

Second melody is great.........wouldn't change a word.

Chorus
Talking to the bees. Don't get it. As with many expressions I found in here that I don't understand, I'll google it and see there's any references to such a saying and this came up empty. A co-worker and fellow fan said he thought she was saying this guys talking to himself as he's walking down the street and he's someone who uses a lot of hand gestures so it kind of looks like he's swatting at bees. I suppose that's believable but it's not easily understandable as I said I thought a song should be.
Fried days. Another phrase I googled and except for a song about drugs, couldn't find any meaningful definition of this saying.
Absolutely love the way she pronounces "walking" in this, not to mention several other words.

The last part of the song is great, easily understandable. Also love that line Mon chou chou.

Third song,
I'm not twenty
<a href="http://img695.imageshack.us/i/imnottwenty.jpg/" target="_blank"><img src="http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/8007/imnottwenty.th.jpg" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://img604.imageshack.us/content.php?page=blogpost&files=img695/8007/imnottwenty.jpg" title="QuickPost"><img src="http://imageshack.us/img/butansn.png" alt="QuickPost" border="0"></a> Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others!
First melody, I would've used bright in stead of right in Morning light shining right

Second melody, okey dokey and boogie-woogie, just don't sound right, sound old hat.
I think I have an understanding in this second melody, of what she's trying to say here, but it goes against one of the rules I said should be followed for a song that you're trying to break into an English listening market with and that it should be easily understandable and it's not by a long shot.
Chorus goes pretty well, but I go as I come, again, just doesn't sound right. I'm sure it's wrong grammaticly, but I can't say for sure since English was one of my worst subjects.
I also think it was a mistake to throw in a line of French. I could see using a well know French phrase like C'est la vie, ( I'm not saying this phrase should have been used, just a well know phrase similar to it.) but most people in this country wouldn't have a clue as to what this meant. It probably would've been okay had the rest of the song been more easily understandable.
I also don't think many people picture a stone, light or otherwise flying.
The last 2 melodies are once again, not easy to figure out exactly what's she's trying to say, they don't flow smoothly and as a result, I think are hard to remember.

Song 4 Amelie
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This song, for the most part, I would not change. It is written in a more poetic fashion than the other songs. It's a very beautiful, beautiful, beautiful song. You really have to see the movie, to appreciate it.
It probably would not have been a radio's station's first pick of her song's to play, but once one of her other songs caught on, it would've quickly followed.
I think the only shortcoming was, imo, was I couldn't quite understand the lines,
To see your sign,
Oh would I stay away.

Bottom line is these songs had segments that weren't easily understandable. Such a shame because so many people missed out on the beauty of her voice, the music, the way she danced, the beauty of the person we all know as Alizée!

I hope Alizée knows that the source of the humor was not her, but the way the lyrics were written in English. She did nothing wrong. I never could understand that if MF/LB wanted to make a serious effort breaking Alizée into the English speaking markets, why they didn’t do a better job of creating good English lyrics. My guess has always been that they were targeting audiences whose SECOND language is English, and not the US market.

As far as the dream of singing with Madonna, I imagine Alizée hoped to someday do so, but on a French TV show. Alizée wants to have her cake and eat it too. I can’t tell whether Alizée would have interest in the US at this point or not. I still think she would consider it if our fan base was already large enough to support her, as was the case in Mexico. I don’t think she will try to do it on her own. Let’s also remember that much of this is decided by the record companies. They would probably incur the cost of any US promotion and would like to have a payback. Then again, if she fails to have success in France, they may consider other markets. Who knows for sure.

One final note; all of the songs on Alizée’s first 2 albums are registered at ASCAP in the US, and many of them are administered by ACTS FOUR TWELVE MUSIC, PORTER RANCH, CA. (ASCAP is an association that collects your airplay royalties in the US.) I don’t know when this was done, but someone must have considered that at some point these songs might end up on the air in the USA. A while back, Decollage appeared at ASCAP and very recently, so did Mademoiselle Juliette. Decollage is administered by W B MUSIC CORP, LOS ANGELES, CA, and Mademoiselle Juliette is administered by SONY ATV MUSIC PUBLISHING, NASHVILLE, TN. One thing to note, these databases are usually quite slow at being updated. So is this a sign that they were hoping this music would hit the US market? Or maybe just a precaution? I don’t know.

To be honest, I'm a huge Alizee fan, mainly because she sings in French. Although I'm working on this language to understand what she is singing.

I'm not really a fan of her english versions, I even bought the french edition of Mes Courants Electriques instead of the European version, so that those english songs are not included:rolleyes: How twisted is that?:eek:

On the other hand I love her version of La Isla Bonita & Sound of Silence:wub:

I'm really hoping she continues with french songs, which suits her best

Yea its definitely the translation that is the weird part of the English songs... regardless I still like hearing her speak English. I find her accent very cute :wub:

haha yea, hearing her sing im fed up even though it doesnt make sense at time is priceless.
"Bombs you can go away..............from me" ???????????????????? :confused::D

Hahahaa, or "boogeywoogey" in I'm Not Twenty?

I love that part because it's adorable :wub: but it doesn't really make sense!
:p

yea it does, shes saying me (meaning FRA only) can go boogie (dance) with her.
I cant do the boogie but im sure Alizee can teach me!

That's something I wondered about too. Even though I'm sure she knows now, that the reason was because of the poor re-writing of these songs, at the time, I'll bet she didn't know and took if very personnaly. It might have been very depressing to her and may have played a big part in her decision to run off and start a family when she did.

I'd also like to add that I was hugely disappointed that the overwhelming adorable :wub: hiccup thingy in J'en Ai Marre didn't translate into english.

Well spoken Scruffy. I love her singing in English, but some of the lyrics of those songs just seemed poorly chosen.


I never thought of that. That mkes sense. I twould explain some of the lyrics.


As much as I like her singing in French, I hope she makes another stab at English. The Christmas song provides a glimmer of hope. :)


I don't think that the English songs had much, if anything, to do with her stepping away. Too low on the totem pole.

However, I do wish that someone would do a rewrite and she would re-record a couple of them (I know... that time is past). She comes through so intensely in a couple of spots with the lyrics that I believe if the songs were rewritten then she would have the potential to really blow away an English audience.

Here's hoping that she includes an English song on (the export version of) the new album. :)