minimoonstar:

maddieloveskpop:

Jacynthe, “Don’t Touch Those Faders” (French version). Interesting here for two reasons. Firstly, After School recorded this song as “Virgin” on their album of the same name. Secondly, this version of the song (there’s an English one as well) mixes in English lines with the French, which reminds me of the way K-pop songs mix English in with the Korean, as “Virgin” indeed does. However, I don’t think the motivation here for including English is the same as it is in a K-pop, that is that “English sounds cool and foreign”, because Jacynthe is Canadian and Québecoise and singing for an urban, clubbing Québecois audience that, presumably, is acquainted with English as an everyday language.

Here’s what I want to know: Can we draw a parallel between historical Anglophone imperialism over Francophone Québecois culture and Western globalizing/cultural colonization of South Korean culture (and colonialism/imperialism via U.S. military bases, etc.), and link that to the use of English by a Francophone Québecoise singer and by a South Korean girl group? Or are we post- all that and able to assign other reasons for the use of English in these songs, ones that prioritize the music over its cultural context and assign more agency and autonomy to the people producing the music? I’d actually prefer to do the former, but I don’t want to jump to any conclusions.

Yes and… yes, but (much like that other piece explaining the “economics underlying Montreal’s indie scene”) there are other, complexifying considerations IMO. CRTC airplay guidelines probably dictate why there are two versions of the song, and how much English you can get away with and still count as “French” for French pop formats (both are Can-Con of course). There is also a longstanding tradition of French-from-France rock/pop/folk containing random English lyrics - this happens to be foremost on my mind because I’m playing Charlotte For Ever, the ‘87 album Serge Gainsbourg recorded with his daughter Charlotte, which is full of the sort of bilingual wordplay one associates with Japanese and Korean diaspora rappers. If I had to reduce the argument I’d say it was because rock’n’roll = English (American or British), to the French, and hip-hop = English (definitely American), to Asians, and a certain level/type of massive global popstar-dom = English to everyone, and so artists use English to anchor their work explicitly in those genre traditions (not quite the same as “trying to be authentic”). Almost analogous to, it’s got a “wobble”, therefore it is dubstep. This is global cultural hegemony(tm) obv but idk if it is historical imperialism…? I’m not saying the connotations of Jacynthe using English are exactly the same as Serge Gainsbourg using English, but IMO they’re more similar than different.

(Also paging microphoneheartbeats on this one I guess)

(Also, is the first case we’ve identified of a Quebec French artist rerecording a K-pop tune? Wow! I’m used to lots of back-and-forth between eg. Japan and Sweden, but these are fruitful new markets opening up, rolling.)

Disappointed with this track in comparison to the After School (which was easily the best thing on the album and would have made my top 100 had it been a single; also, curiously, I thought the B-sides of the AS-Red and AS-Blue singles were far superior to the A sides, and that poor-voiced Orange Caramel managed to put forth the best single of the bunch, “Bangkok City,” which sounds totally Italodisco). Not exactly sure why I prefer “Virgin”; that AS are weaker than Jacynthe as singers helps the singing and instruments to blend — the track’s not a belt-it-out anthem, and AS’s voices work as atmosphere surrounding the riff rather than competition to it. (Don’t know if that’s really the reason; maybe I’m just more familiar with “Virgin,” and I don’t want to cope with adding Jacynthe to my year-end list and with the disruption this would cause.)

As for the use of English in international songs: in Korea, a reason in addition to the ones you and Maddie give is that more Asians speak English than Korean, and Korea has its marketing sight on all of East Asia. Obviously, English’s ubiquity is the result of historical imperialism (also of historical international trade, with England being a dominant maritime nation, though of course a lot of this trade was stoked by overseas colonies). But citing “imperialism” as an explanation for current use of English doesn’t really explain anything. Once the ubiquity of the language is established, then there are plenty of reasons unrelated to imperialism — and occasionally even opposed to imperialism — to use it. And I presume (though I don’t really know) that in India, Singapore, and the Philippines English is used in part to prevent the majority indigenous languages from swamping the minority languages. (Whereas in Canada you’re stuck with an either/or between English and French, with no third language to retreat to. But as for imperialism, the presence of the French language in North America is also the result of imperialism, is it not? From imperialism and immigration, that is, which are not exactly the same thing even if the 17th and 18th century immigrants came from imperial countries.) But anyway, there’s a big difference between the Western powers trying to force open Asian markets to Western goods in the 19th century, on the one hand, and, on the other, Asian nations in the 21st century using English as a way to get their own goods to foreign markets.

So I guess my answer is on the “agency” side of Maddie’s question, though complicated by the agents’ wanting or needing to adapt to a world in which they’re just not that big in comparison to those around them.

By the way, I haven’t seen writers or producers credits for “Virgin.” For all I know, it was originally written in Norway, like “Run Devil Run.” “Tell Me Your Wish (Genie)” [oops! “Run Devil Run” did have Scandinavian input, but “Genie” is what I had in mind, it originally being written in Norway but recorded (and adapted) first in Uzbek and Korean, and then in an inferior Dutch version that was more similar than either of the others to the original composition].