Does anyone else run into this with French music?

[Deepwaters]

OK, I decided today to do a YouTube search for Superbus, because I'd heard one of their songs and wanted to hear more. Good group, great music, all of it really danceable, good videos, too. But I found I was having a real hard time understanding the lyrics. I don't mean I didn't understand what the lyrics meant, I mean I had a hard time picking up what Jenn (the lead singer) was singing in the first place. What the words were.

I found a web site called Lyrics Mania that has lyrics for just about everyone including Superbus, so I started looking them up and reading them as well as listening. And now I understand why I was having problems. Take the song "Butterfly" for example.

To start with, obviously "butterfly" is an English word. This group does that a lot, tossing English words and phrases or in one case an entire English chorus, into an otherwise French song. In this case, they put "butterfly" in there because it rhymes with a whole slew of French words, "pagaille," "détails," "bataille," "entrailles," which "papillon" (French for "butterfly") does not. Oh, and they also had "bye-bye" at the end of another line in the song. I sometimes have a problem figuring out where one language stops and the other starts. The first three words are "J'ai des butterfly," and was slurred enough that I kept hearing "Silly butterfly."

On top of which, sometimes Jenn's pronunciation is, shall we say, creative. She pronounced some of the above words so they sounded like "pie guy" or "buy tie," and I could not for the life of me recognize "pagaille" or "bataille" from that! Sounded pretty damn cool, though! There's a wonderful bouncy verbal rhythm running through the song that wouldn't be the same if all of it were pronounced correctly. And if I were a native French speaker or maybe even had been studying the language for more than 3 months I wouldn't have a problem.

Has anyone else run into this sort of thing?

[nurvonic]

lol wow you look too much into it. i just listen and enjoy how it sounds. i mean, just listen to them!

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[thats amazazazing]

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

OK, I decided today to do a YouTube search for Superbus, because I'd heard one of their songs and wanted to hear more. Good group, great music, all of it really danceable, good videos, too. But I found I was having a real hard time understanding the lyrics. I don't mean I didn't understand what the lyrics meant, I mean I had a hard time picking up what Jenn (the lead singer) was singing in the first place. What the words were.

I found a web site called Lyrics Mania that has lyrics for just about everyone including Superbus, so I started looking them up and reading them as well as listening. And now I understand why I was having problems. Take the song "Butterfly" for example.

To start with, obviously "butterfly" is an English word. This group does that a lot, tossing English words and phrases or in one case an entire English chorus, into an otherwise French song. In this case, they put "butterfly" in there because it rhymes with a whole slew of French words, "pagaille," "détails," "bataille," "entrailles," which "papillon" (French for "butterfly") does not. Oh, and they also had "bye-bye" at the end of another line in the song. I sometimes have a problem figuring out where one language stops and the other starts. The first three words are "J'ai des butterfly," and was slurred enough that I kept hearing "Silly butterfly."

On top of which, sometimes Jenn's pronunciation is, shall we say, creative. She pronounced some of the above words so they sounded like "pie guy" or "buy tie," and I could not for the life of me recognize "pagaille" or "bataille" from that! Sounded pretty damn cool, though! There's a wonderful bouncy verbal rhythm running through the song that wouldn't be the same if all of it were pronounced correctly. And if I were a native French speaker or maybe even had been studying the language for more than 3 months I wouldn't have a problem.

Has anyone else run into this sort of thing?

nah its just you, ive been listening to them for awhile now ^_^

[espire]

JBG, Mickey me!
Some other girl is
JBG, JBG
JBG, pool envy
Uh, tore the glove
Say lazily JBG

Injun fawn girl
Says I'll feel the beat
Say let's... dance-y!....

[Twitch]

Pie guy, lol that's funny. Noticed it after you pointed it out but never had a problem with it (didn't really think of them being mispronounced though, just sang as opposed to spoken). I usually do dig up the lyrics for French songs to make out a few of the lyrics I can't catch, but usually I can make out about 95% or more of a song before looking up the lyrics.

But as far as Superbus is concerned it is the mispronunciation of English words that I find more interesting, happens a lot when French singers sing in English they often pronounce words that are the same in both languages closer to the French pronunciation(ie: radio in Radio Song).

And so this is not a completely useless post, here is a good quality video of Butterfly. Still waiting for the other high quality version of the videos to show up in the P2P or torrent networks, they're out there though.
http://rapidshare.com/files/36615017...erfly.avi.html
Rapidshare was the first to start working again without getting a server too busy try again later.

[espire]

Wait... Twitch, did you just call me Pie Guy?

[Twitch]

No, was talking about Deepwaters misunderstood lyrics. Never noticed it before but it is plausible and kind of funny when you listen to the song. Reminded me of a radio station contest where you had to call in with misunderstood lyrics and they would play the song and if the DJ's also heard the wrong lyrics you won stuff, and some could be pretty funny.

[espire]

Oh, okay O_o

[fsquared]

Yeah, in JEAM, for the longest time, there's this part where I swore she was singing "KEEP...MY...DISTANCE....".

[Joey_adore_Jung]

yea i think i ran into that french tune somewhere before it's pretty good