Jacynthe, “Don’t Touch Those Faders” (French version). Interesting here for two reasons. Firstly, After School recorded this song as “Virgin” on their album of the same name. Secondly, this version of the song (there’s an English one as well) mixes in English lines with the French, which reminds me of the way K-pop songs mix English in with the Korean, as “Virgin” indeed does. However, I don’t think the motivation here for including English is the same as it is in a K-pop, that is that “English sounds cool and foreign”, because Jacynthe is Canadian and Québecoise and singing for an urban, clubbing Québecois audience that, presumably, is acquainted with English as an everyday language.
Here’s what I want to know: Can we draw a parallel between historical Anglophone imperialism over Francophone Québecois culture and Western globalizing/cultural colonization of South Korean culture (and colonialism/imperialism via U.S. military bases, etc.), and link that to the use of English by a Francophone Québecoise singer and by a South Korean girl group? Or are we post- all that and able to assign other reasons for the use of English in these songs, ones that prioritize the music over its cultural context and assign more agency and autonomy to the people producing the music? I’d actually prefer to do the former, but I don’t want to jump to any conclusions.
Yes and… yes, but (much like that other piece explaining the “economics underlying Montreal’s indie scene”) there are other, complexifying considerations IMO. CRTC airplay guidelines probably dictate why there are two versions of the song, and how much English you can get away with and still count as “French” for French pop formats (both are Can-Con of course). There is also a longstanding tradition of French-from-France rock/pop/folk containing random English lyrics - this happens to be foremost on my mind because I’m playing Charlotte For Ever, the ‘87 album Serge Gainsbourg recorded with his daughter Charlotte, which is full of the sort of bilingual wordplay one associates with Japanese and Korean diaspora rappers. If I had to reduce the argument I’d say it was because rock’n’roll = English (American or British), to the French, and hip-hop = English (definitely American), to Asians, and a certain level/type of massive global popstar-dom = English to everyone, and so artists use English to anchor their work explicitly in those genre traditions (not quite the same as “trying to be authentic”). Almost analogous to, it’s got a “wobble”, therefore it is dubstep. This is global cultural hegemony(tm) obv but idk if it is historical imperialism…? I’m not saying the connotations of Jacynthe using English are exactly the same as Serge Gainsbourg using English, but IMO they’re more similar than different.
(Also paging microphoneheartbeats on this one I guess)
(Also, is the first case we’ve identified of a Quebec French artist rerecording a K-pop tune? Wow! I’m used to lots of back-and-forth between eg. Japan and Sweden, but these are fruitful new markets opening up, rolling.)
