Welcome back for round two!
If you didn’t see the first instalment of these posts, you can check it out here. It’s pretty self explanatory, though. Basically, these are some songs I’ve found from around the world so if you want to expand your tastes or playlists, here’s twelve potentials for you to sample.
As always, no unhappy music here, and these songs are in no particular order so my god are the vibes varied. You have been warned. I’ve linked the Spotify playlist and all the Youtube videos too, so you can choose the method of listening that suits you 🙂
Ireland – Monto – The Dubliners
I’ve long since had a soft spot for Irish drinking songs, which at one point I definitely confused with sea shanties. I believe it started in the lower classes of the Titanic, that one scene where the fiddle music plays. You know the one I mean. There’s something intensely joyful about groups of people getting drunk and singing/dancing together even if they’re not particularly good singers. It’s just stereotypical fun, ini. Also sublime inspiration music for any period maladaptive fantasies you have. You’ll find that since many Irish drinking songs are passed down through the years, a lot of them have multiple versions. But, if you ever need a good version of an Irish ditty, the Dubliners are probably your best bet. So, how to pick from the collection of these choral beauties I’ve amassed in playlists over the years? Let’s go with Monto, because it’s very happy and very easy to sing along to. In this case, they’re singing a bouncy little tune about the red light district in their home city. Once you know that little factoid, the promiscuous lyrics (written entirely in Irish idiom) are so much better.
Italy – Splendido Splendente – Donatella Retore
You’ve heard of Rafaella Carra, but have you heard of Donatella Retore? Because let me tell you, this 70s Italian icon is camp, slay, motherrrr by the absolute go-go boot-full. Released in 1979, Splendido Splendente is a smooth love affair between the keys and bass with Retore’s operatic vocals layered on top. It’s supremely catchy, with lyrics that, get this, talk about obsession with image at all points on the gender spectrum. Pretty ahead of its time. It only got to number 6 in the charts! How? Well while it did bring the attention of the Italian public to Donatella, she hadn’t really been famous before it. Fear not, it is rightfully the most played song on her Spotify, so feel free to join the millions of other people who’ve come to give this song the respect it deserves. Retore has also gone on to achieve great things, smashing out the number ones in the late 90s and performing ever since. Sonically, it’s very much in the lane of a mythical Modern Talking and Dusty Springfield collab. It’s the perfect song to breeze about your house while wearing a lilac silken dressing gown, glass of red wine in one hand and an ornate fan in the other. Everybody say ‘thank you Donatella!’
Cataluña – El Muerto Vivo – Peret
The song of the living dead, how creepy. You wouldn’t be able to guess if you didn’t know Spanish though, this lively rumba is too catchy and cool. Originally recorded in 1966, it tells the charmingly morbid story of the narrator’s friend, Blanco Herrera, who after a particularly heavy drunken escapade went missing for a few days. When a body is returned to town, everyone assumes hermano Herrera is dead and gone. However, shock horror, Blanco is alive and well, sauntering into the square to find out that everyone thinks he’s a zombie. As the narrator informs us, ‘he wasn’t dead, no no, he was down at the pub’. Not even his dear lover will be with a zombie, and unfortunately, that’s all the song tells us. No more information about what poor Blanco did next, and with the way the music sounds, you’ll be even more unhappy the song doesn’t continue. However, the Spanish version of Wikipedia claims it was based on a real event in Antioquia. Peret, or Pedro Pubill Calaf, is a Catalonian Romani singer from Motaro, a town in Barcelona. Although he popularised el Muerto vivo, like every great artist and a vast majority of great songs, it was originally recorded by someone else. That person was Guillermo González Arenas from Medellin, who recorded the song for the Trio Venezuela in 1965. So, though Peret is from ‘Spain’, the song is originally from Columbia.
Alright then, it’s that time again for me to rave about my home country’s indie music scene because let me tell you, absolutely no one else does sonic sparkle like the Welsh. Listen to this song and tell me you don’t feel like you’re surrounded by pink haze in a fairy glen, I defy you. A lot of Welsh spiritualism has to do with fairies and witches, and I think this band really are remnants of this mysticism. There’s simply no other way that they could create such audible glitter as this. The lyrics are so lovely too. Eto means again, and the chorus goes ‘if you feel the same, tell me. Again, again, again.’ Adwaith themselves are supreme. The ‘experimental post-punk band’ is fashioned from three women with some very relatable political views. Their debut B-side focused on the barren scape of US politics in 2018, while their single Lipstick Coch is a poetic dismantling of modern rape culture. They even started their own female-only nights at a local club so we can enjoy Welsh rock music in peace. Right now, they’re probably Wales’s biggest musical export, and Eto is by far my favourite song of their entire discography. It just signifies to me a maturing of some kind, in the band’s sound and actually in the song’s sonics.
Norway – Dunk Dunk Dunk – Kløbbman
This song was a meme on Norwegian TikTok for a while, that’s how I came across it. But aside from that, it’s literally impossible to know anything about Kløbbman. His bio on Spotify just says ‘kløbbman bitch’. King. Anyway, that’s how you know that finding flowery adjectives to describe this song like I do for all the others isn’t really possible. In a strange way, this song reminds me of Kpop, except with supremely inane fuckboy lyrics. It’s also got a real…pretentiousness to it, or just blind confidence which honestly just elevates the whole vibe. I mean, I only know a minuscule amount of Norwegian but I think this song is about MILFs. If it’s not, then it really is just a fuckboy antherm so I’m choosing to believe it’s about MILFs. It’s a club banger yes, but there’s something cheeky enough about it to make it a cool one to listen to anytime. Whatever your mood the heavy beat and funky bass is more than enough to get you bouncing, which is good because the build up and chorus must be jumped to. The flow of the second verse tops the first and it’s just short enough never to get annoying.
Russia – Faradenza – Little Big
Before you start panicking, don’t worry, the lyrics are meant to be nonsense. I don’t really think you’re meant to understand a lot of what Little Big do. You may know them as that band slated to win Eurovision 2020 with their incredible song UNO. This song is much the same, with a huge rave beat and siren-like sound, faradenza continues the slightly crazy cool that Little Big are so good at. Like most Russian rave, it’s a mish-mash of sounds that shouldn’t work together, but definitely do. Their lyrics often tackle Russian politics, using satire of stereotypes to make their point. As far as I can work out though, considering these lyrics aren’t in any language at all, Faradenza is a fake perfume that smells so good all the single old ladies will fall in love with you. It’s slogan in the song is ‘la boca de la coca’ which is Spanish slang for being a coke addict, or at least for having ‘coke mouth’. Maybe because the kiss is addictive? The Spanish focus also explains the name of UNO, which you should definitely listen to after this one.
This might well be a deep cut in every sense of the phrase, even in Guinea. This song was originally recorded at some point between 1973 and 1980, and re-released in 2015 by Frankfurt label Analog Africa. Amara Toure was one of the pioneers of afro-cuban music, having achieved success in the Senegalese collective L’Etoile de Dakar at some time in the 1960s. Around that time, Senegal couldn’t get enough of Cuban music, and it inspired their ‘son montuno’ and ‘pachanga’ scenes. Tela is part of Amara’s solo work, and as such it’s an evolved, crisp, pearly example of relaxed beats and bold brass. I can’t quite work out what language the lyrics are in. It has such a Spanish lilt but it may also be Wolof, the Senegalese language. It’s 8 minutes long, so it’s definitely one to sit in and de-stress. You can pick out the sounds of both Latin and African music right from plucks of the Spanish guitar, and I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that the two styles pair together beautifully. Amara Toure’s music stopped in 1980 after he’d released ten songs, and he hasn’t been seen since. As such, getting to listen to songs that have been preserved like this is really a treat from the universe. It kind of reminds me why I search for so much world music. Humans, no matter what boundaries we place between each other, love making nice sounds.
Sri Lanka – Ananthayata Yana – Kasun Indrachapa
This song was the subject of a piece by a lady in my creative non-fiction class, who hailed from Kandy. She spoke at length about how Sri Lanka has, since colonialism, tried to cultivate its culture by eradicating Western musical and visual customs. Ananthayata is a little controversial in the sense that it embraces a synthesis of Sri Lankan and Western traditions. For her, it was a warm reminder of home while she lived and studied in cold and dreary Swansea. She would play it in the library and escape. For me, when I finally played it and got used to the stretching melody and slightly unusual Sri Lankan sounds, it was probably the most beautiful song I’d heard in the last decade. My god, that chorus makes me tear up every single time. And the sax solos, oh! Just incredible. She attempted to translate the lyrics one day for me, explaining that the song depicts a man searching for happiness in the coldest times by picking flowers for his lover, and in return she keeps him warm in her arms. As a final note, Kasun Indrachapa is a combination of the first names of the two band members!
India – Phir Se Ud Chala – Mohit Chauhan
Another one gifted to me by a girl on my course. When discussing our favourite songs, she mentioned loving modern music, but having a particular soft spot for songs from her childhood. She mentioned this song by name and desperate to listen to it, I asked her to type it into my phone. Like many Indian songs there’s a real space to it. I can imagine being in the mountains of Khajjiar and spinning around to Phir Se Ud Chala. It sounds quite spiritual in a way, but that’s probably me stereotyping it. The melody is traditionally Indian, but there’s also something about the instruments that reminds me of those American Jesus songs. It’s from the movie Rockstar, which is dearly beloved by a lot of fans in India. This is namely because it’s the last film of Shammi Kapoor, a huge legend of Bollywood for generations of people. It’s not one of those big dance number songs, it’s more of a falling in love montage tune. The lyrics read ‘I flew up again, I have flown and left the world below, now I am all yours.’ Also, it’s produced by AR Rahman, you know, of Jah Ho fame. No wonder it’s good.
China – 月亮代表我的心 (The Moon Represents My Heart) – Teresa Teng
Y’all fucking with Teresa Teng? Well you should be. Asia’s Eternal Queen of Pop, Teresa Teng represents some very important things to people across the continent. Her parents fled from China following the Revolution, so when Teng’s music began to be adored across the country, it was banned for being ‘yellow’ or Western. Her songs are very indulgent, melancholy, like sweet lullabies that captured the hearts of Chinese people. Of course, this was dangerous. There was a politician named Teng Xiaoping, which inspired a joke that in the day people had to listen to big Teng, and in the night they chose to listen to little Teng. Of course, that’s not really good for the legitimacy of authoritarian rule, so little Teng was banned. That didn’t stop her, however, and neither did it stop her fans, who bought pirated tapes smuggled in from Hong Kong. The Moon Represents My Heart is one of her most popular songs, and no doubt, it’s pretty representative of why people loved her so much. Free and nostalgic, sweet but not sickly, heady but not heavy, this song is such a beautiful blast from an ugly past.
Japan – 一夜一夜に人見頃 – DELUXExDELUXE
Ok, how to describe deluxe deluxe. Fat ladies. Japanese rock. Cool dancing. Stunning music videos. What more could you want? Although it’s relatively recent, this song gives me such whiplash from being a 12 year old dipping my toes into J-rock. From what I can understand, Deluxe Deluxe, often said as Dera Dera, are pretty fringe in Japan too, they have an air of low-budget and underrated about them. If they were given the fanbase they deserved they’d be putting out some really extra stuff. The English title of this song is ‘The Best Time to See People Overnight’, and the guttural and gravelly lyrics from the lead-singer detail wanting a lover in the nighttime. Wrapped up in whining guitars is a fast-paced melody that really brings the best of J-rock to the surface. They really get into modern fan culture too. Because the combined weight of the members in 530kg, they play a lot on it a lot in their marketing. Since I myself am a trademarked Big Bitch, I find this so endearing. Their concept is the four big ladies are flowers, and security (the skinny ones) are employed to protect the flowers. This is why they always wear flowing red cloaks and the security wear glasses. Their fans are called Kalories! It’s all so cute except for their music, which is a blast.
Vietnam – Yêu Em Dài Lâu – Duc Huy
Originally by Duc Huy, this song is a Vietnamese classic that’s been frequently covered. This means there’s lots of different versions, so these are the ones I recommend, but you should really listen to a few and choose your favourites. Duc Huy released one song in 1969 and then fled the Vietnam war to the Philippines, where he helped to direct other refugees. His song remained popular among Vietnam’s ageing youth, and finally in 1991 he released his first album, aptly titled ‘long and rainy road’ on which Yeu em Dai Lau, or Love You Long, was featured. It’s a very poetic song, with a soothingly simple sound. It’s got another sickly sweet melody not dissimilar to Teresa Teng, but this song is lighter somehow. Stripped back but not entirely bare. It’s a kitchen love song not a bedroom love song, does that make sense? The Vietnamese language is something we hear so rarely in the West, surprise surprise, so hearing it sung is indescribably beautiful. Once you hear this song once you won’t be able to stop humming it.
ELLE VA 