music

[Strato Incendus]

And I, in contrast, am hardly surprised to hear that from you...

I'm curious though, is it common in your country to sing famous English Christmas songs, like the above mentioned White Christmas, in Finnish? Meaning did you know the lyrics to all the songs already prior to your first listen of the CD? Or did they actively translate some of these songs from English to Finnish and were the first to do so?

Also, looks like Floor and Elize (from the Netherlands and Sweden, respectively) have now started singing in Finnish as well for that purpose (Elize only live, though; Floor actually did a studio recording of one of the Finnish songs). Before, it was only Fins singing in Swedish (Tony Kakko on "Julen är här"), which is a lot more common in general. I mean, Finntroll essentially based their entire career on that!

[Ryemanni]

There are old translations for every classic christmas song, but I don't know who makes the "official" translations for the more recent ones. I think each language has their own versions of the classics.

Floor Jansen is currently the lead singer in Nightwish, so I'm familiar with her work (There she sings in english though). I don't really listen to music where people sing in finnish/swedish, raskasta joulua is actually one of the rare exceptions.

[Strato Incendus]

Of course, the traditional classics exist in every language, but people in Gemany for example wouldn't sing a translation of a "pop Christmas song" like White Christmas, or Happy X-Mas, War is Over, heck, not even of Jingle Bells ^^.

I know, both Floor and Anette learned Finnish for the purposes of being part of Nightwish, though a lot of the interaction between Anette and the rest of the band still took place in English, and now with Irish Troy Donnockley as an additional official member, that's probably even more feasible.

I doubt Anette still finds a lot of use for her Finnish skills nowadays ^^, but Kudos to Floor for actually capturing hers on a studio album!

I don't really listen to music where people sing in finnish/swedish, raskasta joulua is actually one of the rare exceptions.

Well, bands singing in Swedish are rare anyway; most successful Swedish musicians, and there are a lot of them, just sing in English all the time. The only one I know who sing in Swedish all the time are Finntroll (who, guess what, are actually from Finland), and Sabaton did a single album, "Carolus Rex", in Swedish (but there was an English version as well).

By "more common", I only meant that more Fins can speak Swedish than vice versa.

In music, however, the Finnish language actually seems a lot more common among metal bands, some I'm familiar with include Korpiklaani and Teräsbetoni (their lead singer Jarkko Ahola is also part of the Raskasta Joulua ensemble).

In fact, Raskasta Joulua is basically the Northern Kings (Marco Hietala, Jarkko Ahola, Tony Kakko and the guy from Charon) plus friends ^^. And since Northern Kings are all about metal covers of famous pop songs, a Christmas equivalent suddenly doesn't seem too far fetched anymore .

Finally, even major bands like Nightwish did some single songs in Finnish. One of them, the instrumental version of "Erämaan viimeinen", was the background music for the first NeoLemmix level I ever made .

[SQron188]

Have a playlist of a few YTPMVs of track I used for one of my contest entries: (link)

[Metallica]

I listen to different music. I love Michael Jackson's hits and Metallica, as my nick suggests... I also like 80s and 90s dance hits.

[namida]

Dragostea din tei - by O-Zone
Okay, this song is by far the most successful of those listed here. However, I repeatedly get the feeling that its fame seems to be largely restricted to Germany?

I think you're greatly underestimating this song's fame. It's known almost everywhere. Just check out the covers / derivatives list on that song's Wikipedia article.

[ccexplore]

I think Strato might be talking about its reach before that other youtube video went viral?

Does make me wonder whether songs/music in non-English language usually takes a viral video (sometimes that can be the official music video of course) to achieve worldwide fame?

[Strato Incendus]

By "that other video" you mean "Numa Numa" with the guy flailing his arms around to this song?

That completely passed me by originally. I only found out about that due to it appearing in a "meme song", pieced together out of several internet-famous songs. Of course, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" and "Trololo" were also among them .

[ccexplore]

By "that other video" you mean "Numa Numa" with the guy flailing his arms around to this song?

That completely passed me by originally.

Yup, that one. And it's completely opposite for me, until your post the only reference I ever had to that song was the numa numa video.  And it even took namida making a reply for me to actually pay attention and went to the youtube link in your post, to see what the fuss was.  And then I still had to wait past like the first 30 or so seconds of filler in the video before the recognizable "maya-hee" part finally shows up and I'm like, "oh, that".

[607]

Do you guys know about StreamingSoundtracks.com?
It's an online radio station where you can request tracks yourself. The track will play after 60-100 minutes, generally. There are currently 7267 albums on there.
For $6 monthly you can be VIP and request tracks more often. There's also a very nice community that's formed mostly in the chatbox.
The website is quite outdated though, and not everything works as you would expect on the internet in this age, unfortunately. But the content and people make that a very small issue!

... No, I'm not sponsored by SST, I just wanted to let people know, as I feel like some here might enjoy it.

Edit: This website features soundtracks from movies, games and tv series: there are sister websites for 80's pop music, death metal, EDM and classical music as well, although those aren't as big.