Is it painfully obvious to you Brits/Americans when you hear a band singing in English as their second/third language? - I've always wanted to know if it makes you guys wince?

[Rotter]

"This is my life" is a Danish tune (quite popular in my country) from 1976. English proficiency was shite back then, so I was just wondering what you think.

I guess ABBA is the better example. Can you tell they aren't native English speakers?

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

Sometimes, and it's kinda funny...like hearing The Scorpions or Accept sing in German accents.

 

[Rotter]

Lol. We also need a German to review "Komm gib mir deine Hand".

 

[oldTireWater]

I usually can't tell. Not in rock/metal/electronic anyway.

 

[TheImportantFart]

I guess ABBA is the better example. Can you tell they aren't native English speakers?

ABBA's pretty obvious, but with bands like Europe or a-ha, I couldn't tell you they were Scandinavian purely based on hearing them sing.

 

[CWCissey]

Depends on the artist.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

As an Italo/Euro Disco fan...yes.

 

[Milkis]

Especially when they sing "POCKETTO no COIN~ SOREto YOU WANNA BE MY FRIEND~" it just gives it away that they actually speak Japanese

 

[Rotter]

ABBA's pretty obvious, but with bands like Europe or a-ha, I couldn't tell you they were Scandinavian purely based on hearing them sing.

Damn. I had no idea they were from Sweden and Norway, respectively. I just assumed they were US bands.

I'd like to think I could always tell that these fuckers were Dutch. I'm probably just flattering myself.

 

[Coolio55]

Depends. I am very sensitive to shitty translation from Japanese. I know all the tropes.
I recall one song on a spinoff album to the game "Um Jammer Lammy" used the word "eat" when they really should have used "drink" because japan doesn't have separate words for eating and drinking (Well they TECHNICALLY do but it's a rarely used loan word from english).
There's also when they fail to pluralize stuff or awkward literal translations of common japanese turns of phrase. It can't be helped.

 

[Not Really Here]

Depends on how long they have been singing any particular song and how much pronunciation practice/coaching they have had on those specific words.

 

[Megaroad 2012]

Not really.

Ironically I sometimes forget Trent Reznor is from Ohio because of his weird way of speaking.

 

[User names must be unique]

I typically don't mind so long as the hook/chorus isn't a cliché or bad grammatically like most Jap tunes and some Mediterranean tunes. Not that I listen to much foreign music, I only have 5 ESL artists in my library only 2 are immediately obvious as non native speakers to me (Bjork and The Knife)

I'm curious people can determine whether an artist is British/American/Australian/Canadian, I struggle with that sometimes.

 

[melty]

No I had no idea lol

 

[Seminal Ointments Lain]

Sometimes, sometimes I hear ESLs who speak english better than half of bongistanis or amerimutts I meet.

Hint Machine's sole single and cover do a good job. It's obvious they're Eastern European but no "painful".
The Nearing Light, the only good thing to come of Postal III.

[Postal III Soundtrack] Hint Machine - The Nearing Light [HQ]

A underrated Synthpop song featured in 2011 game, POSTAL III.

www.youtube.com

Better Than Love, a cover of a Hurts song

https://soundcloud.com/hintmachine/hint-machine-better-than-love-hurts-cover

Infected Mushroom, maybe technically cheating but they do a weirdly great job as sounding accented but not clearly Israeli.
Here they fake a Mexican accent:

Infected Mushroom - Becoming Insane

Becoming Insane de Infected Mushroom

www.youtube.com

In Front Of Me is a better example of what I mean

In Front Of Me

Provided to YouTube by The Orchard EnterprisesIn Front Of Me · Infected MushroomVicious Delicious℗ 2007 BNE LtdReleased on: 2007-04-01Auto-generated by YouTube.

www.youtube.com

Jamiroquai is only 50% Native, but was raised by them like that 47 Ronin movie with Keanu except instead of Honor, it's Dancing and Suicide is replaced by Hats.

Jamiroquai - Canned Heat (Official Video)

Jamiroquai's official music video for 'Canned Heat'. Click to listen to Jamiroquai on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/JamiroquaiSpot?IQid=JamiCHAs featured on Hi...

www.youtube.com

Jamiroquai - Little L

Jamiroquai's official music video for 'Little l'. Click to listen to Jamiroquai on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/JamiroquaiSpot?IQid=JamiLLAs featured on High ...

www.youtube.com

Mando Diao are vaguely Scandanavian alt. rock stars with a more notable 80s-themed album:

Mando Diao | Black Saturday (Official Video)

Mando Diao - Black Saturday (Official Video)

www.youtube.com

Mando Diao - Romeo [High Quality]

Mando Diao - RomeoALL RIGHTS BELONG TO MANDO DIAO!

www.youtube.com

Their normal sound:

Mando Diao - One Last Fire (Official Video)

The new album "BANG" out now! 🔥► Buy / Stream / Download: https://mando-diao.ffm.to/bang.oydCredits:Video by Andreas Öhman, NAIVEhttp://naive.seFollow ↓● Fa...

www.youtube.com

Mando Diao - Down In The Past (Official Video)

Lyssna på Mando Diao i Spotify här: http://open.spotify.com/artist/5I4eibDkC7gg0hmczTZuND

www.youtube.com

David Bowie, while song might mistake him for a native english speaker he is ESL. English is the just the first Human Language he learned.
Low: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL1ZJvW8jPWdyv6LLsGKCt8QtoDif-5hN

There are more but I'm feeling lazy.

 

[Rotter]

I typically don't mind so long as the hook/chorus isn't a cliché or bad grammatically like most Jap tunes and some Mediterranean tunes. Not that I listen to much foreign music, I only have 5 ESL artists in my library only 2 are immediately obvious as non native speakers to me (Bjork and The Knife)

I'm curious people can determine whether an artist is British/American/Australian/Canadian, I struggle with that sometimes.

For an embarrassingly long time I thought The Rolling Stones were from Tennesee or something.

 

[All Cops Are Based]

It's obvious but it can be funny/charming. That's not what most artists want to be, though.
Even when they've got pretty solid English, like Kraftwerk, there are just these weird little turns of phrase no native English speaker would ever write. Like
"She's a model and she's looking good
I'd like to take her home that's understood"

There's a Japanese band called Anthem who tried to bypass this problem by just hiring a British native English speaker guy to sing. The worst possible thing you can do.
He had 0 chemistry with the band, but maybe a frontman singing in actual english could be the band's road to success in the West, or that was their plan anyway. Nope. Nobody cares about Anthem in the west, and the white guy singer era is just weird and offputting to anyone who's really into Japanese metal (the band's real audience). Ultimately, just writing in broken English is way less awkward.

 

[Cryonic Haunted Bullets]

At first, a Scandinavian sounds just like an American or Brit. It's only when he explicitly mentions his country of origin that you start to notice his accent - which is absolutely infuriating in how subtle it is. Scandies are so good at English that they fall smack in the middle of the Uncanny Valley.

 

[TFT-A9]

Honestly the ones that tend to come off sounding the silliest are the Asian bands, but I'm not going to knock them for trying... just saying that I don't have to understand a word being said to think it sounds good.

 

[Pixy]

I typically don't mind so long as the hook/chorus isn't a cliché or bad grammatically like most Jap tunes and some Mediterranean tunes. Not that I listen to much foreign music, I only have 5 ESL artists in my library only 2 are immediately obvious as non native speakers to me (Bjork and The Knife)

I'm curious people can determine whether an artist is British/American/Australian/Canadian, I struggle with that sometimes.

Most Anglosphere artists put on an American accent when they sing, pronouncing their words in the American style. There are some vocalists who stick to normal pronunciations, and those are the ones you can pick out as Aussie/Brit/Canuck.