In listening to all the finalists, I was reminded of a draft that I started writing months ago. All it contained was the one sentence that I couldn't quite find words to go with.
Has anyone else ever noticed how people's accents tend to fade away when they're singing?
This isn't always the case - I think specifically of the Spanish singing accents in West Side Story and the fabulous Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in Once and their Swell Season albums. For the most part, though, people sound very similar while singing. I feel like this goes for other languages too - I've sung in at least 3 foreign languages, only one of which I can actually speak, and it has never seemed difficult [for me, at least] to pick up the correct inflections and pronunciations.
I imagine this has something to do with how you have to sing differently than you talk, but I do music for fun and so can't give any technical explanation of why this is. That makes sense though, right?
Quite a few of the best [in my opinion] songs this year were in the home country's language, so posting them doesn't help my argument. I'll have to work them into some other rambling. But here are a couple of lovely songs to enjoy, more or less accent free.
The entry from Iceland. The violin playing reminds me of Alexander Rybak's win.
The entry from Hungary. I think this is the best video in the contest.
The entry from Ireland. These guys are so ridiculous.
The entry from Azerbaijan. They won last year with another great song.
The entry from Germany. So much better than the last couple of years.
The entry from Slovakia. They didn't make it to the finals but they deserved to.
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