If you've been reading this blog for the past
x number of months and paying attention to the "Music" listings at the top, you might have noticed that I've been kind of hot on this band
Sonata Arctica. It's rather interesting how I came to learn of them.
A
friend used to work as an IT specialist at some company or other and usually had little to do (employees would call in, say "My computer's broken!", he would tell them how to plug it in, etc.). Every so often, though (I guess it happened at least three times), some random internet hacker would hack into their computers. It wasn't a malicious hacking; there was no evidence of data being stolen or destroyed, or anything like that. No, all he did was make it so that every computer screen displayed his hacker logo and name, and played, on an infinite loop,
this song.
Now, of course, my friend was annoyed at having to go in undo this every time, but the song captured his attention, and he played it for me one day, knowing that I would like it. He had no idea who performed it or what it was called (he'd guessed "Heart of an Eagle"), but, of course, since we live in the crazy 21st century, I just pulled out my iPhone and
Shazamed it. As it turns out, the song is "Eagleheart" by a Finnish power metal band named
Stratovarius (note the spelling).
"
Power metal?" I pondered. "I've never heard of that..."
( My discovery of power metal. )So that's all well and good. Why the title, you ask? Simple: All Sonata Artica's songs are in English.
Why, one might wonder? After all, the band comprises native speakers of Finnish who've lived their entire lives in Finland. Why sing in a foreign language?
( A brief history of English-singing European bands and a brief intro to Finnish. )So, when you combine English lyrics (
rhyming lyrics, mind you) with Finnish, the results are often strained. Here are some examples from several of Sonata Arctica's most famous songs (theoretically. The band isn't popular here, so I actually have no idea which are their most famous songs).
( Sonata Arctica's lyrical gaffes. )After all this, one might wonder: What is the point of this post? Am I trashing Sonata Arctica? Is the point to insult non-native-English speakers? Eek! I certainly hope that that's not what came across! If anything, I have to applaud how well all these bands have learned English. It's quite incredible, and I wish I had the same level of fluency in
any other language (especially Finnish, which is so freaking cool).
Here's what I wonder, though. Composing poetry in one's own language is incredibly difficult. Composing it in
another language must be even more difficult—I'd call it impossible if it hadn't been done so many times. But honestly, why compose songs in English? Why not compose them in Finnish?
A practical answer was given by someone whose response I can no longer find, but which I know exists somewhere in the
Conlang list archives. The essence of it was that all of these guys grew up listening to their favorite bands, all of whom sung in English, so they decided to do so as well. Additionally, there is a huge market for music in English, and a tiny one for music in Finnish.
Oh! I found it. You can read the whole post
here (it's by Lars Finsen, a top-notch conlanger. You can read more about his conlang Urianian
here), but this is the relevant part (my emphasis below):
Well, English is the language of popular songs, it's the perceived
truth. Young people with songwriting ambitions write in English
because only then they can break through worldwide. And they are fans
of bands singing in English. Songs in their own language seem
inferior. In Norway, even people who don't seem to have international
ambitions sometimes sing to their fellow Norwegians in English.
Here is where I disagree (not about what
is, but about what should be), at least personally. When it comes to a novel, there's nothing the average English speaker can get out of a Finnish text; it must be translated. With a song, though, 98% of it is the
music, not the words! For the most part, no one cares! At the very basic level, what the listener hears is the sound. It's not like a novel or a movie, where some level of understanding is required, either linguistic or musical (anyone can enjoy any type of music even if they have no idea what went into creating it, or how it works). The lyrics are incidental, and if fans are interested, translations are sufficient. Why bother kowtowing to the dictates of the English-speaking masses when it's totally unnecessary?
So that's my beef. Think about it: the more you listen to a language, the better you get at understanding and, possibly, using it. I could be learning Finnish while I'm listening to music, but I'm not, and it's all ABBA's fault!