It's not lyrics, but could you hop over here and give us your opinion about this translation?Ursprungligen postat av Kobbe
http://forumet.kent.nu/showthread.php?2883-Jocke-s-Martin-s-and-Sami-s-posts-translated-to-English&p=1141136&viewfull=1#post1141136
I don't think we have reached a conclusion yet.
Done and done.
som flugorna på socker betyder ingenting
Oh I remember hearing and recalling "knutna hand" but I did not dare to write it again since I was not sure about how to spell it and thinking my memory was wrong
Thanks for the explanation. The pocket can mean hidden of course.
But fist in pocket and fist behind me is still not the samebut it certaintly needed to rime somehow in the song.
⚜ ! Jag är en FF och jag älskar Kent ! ⚜
On the whole, I'd say If You Were Here is among the closest to its Swedish equivalent. Actually, the songs on Isola in general are a bit closer to their Swedish counterparts than Hagnesta Hill.
som flugorna på socker betyder ingenting
And what about this "Heavenly junkie"?.... Wasn't it supposed to be "Himmelsk Drog"? (Heaven drug)
Sometimes I don't know if it's done on purpose or if there are english mistakes. The guys are fluent though.
⚜ ! Jag är en FF och jag älskar Kent ! ⚜
Sometimes it just fits better to change it around a bit. Like how the English song is called Protection, while the Swedish translates to "The Protector", and so on.
som flugorna på socker betyder ingenting
On Hagnesta Hill, English versions for The King Is Dead and Stay With Me don't work, similar issue with Revolt III though not as bad. The lyrics sound bad, I can't speak for the Swedish lyrics obviously but I always listen to the Swedish versions of those songs. The English lyrics for Music Non-Stop are good but I prefer the Swedish because of the way he rolls the R's and pronounces words on it.
The English versions of Stop Me June and Timekill To Die For are fantastic though, very poetic. Same with Cowboys I think though those ones maybe took a bit longer to grow. The Protection and Rollercoaster lyrics are also well-written but those are more pop sounding songs so lyrics in general don't sound as special on those.
On Isola, the English lyrics for If You Were Here are a bit cringey (especially in the chorus) so I prefer the Swedish version for that, everything else is decent but not great outside of 747 so I listen to the Swedish versions for Isola (minus Velvet obviously).
They did a good job overall and I'm sure Swedes hate the English lyrics but as a non-Swede, I think they're mostly fine and helped me get into those albums more easily.
reddit.com/r/UKbands
Managed to bump into a random interview as it happens. It's from the Röd era when the guys did the Nordic Rox show in the US. Jocke explains how everyone told them English was a bad idea, but they were determined to make it a dual release, but overall it was a "stupid stupid idea." He also explains the challenge of the writing process because by nature the 2 sets of lyrics can't be the same, and it leaves many things open to interpretation as to what works best, hence the above discussion which still goes on to this day!
They wanted to be world famous but the thing they were best at was limited to a smaller location (at least at the time, who knows what will become of their work).
It's a strange story really. The strangest thing about it was how good they were at that thing that limited them. There is something truly indescribable in how sweet Jocke makes swedish sound in their young indie incarnation. There is a lot more to kent, of course, but lets face it -- the way he sounded on Hagnesta Hill was unbelievably good. Magic. Take how pretty young Leonardo di Caprio's face looked, pour it into your ears and you still only have a third of the effect.
It's easy to put it all on youth. Magic and youth are often equated, in life as in music -- but it was something more. He built a world with his voice and you could look into that world. And you could show it to other people too, when you put his singing on. And they got it, immediately. A universally understandable expression of some ultimately benign, far away but ordinary other-world. Living in Eskilstuna. Listening to stuff like "Isola" in 2004 was really like the antithesis of the cold sickly longing for another place I get form watching K-Pop now. I imagine it sounded far away and perfect to swedes too (only less far away). Like a great time, even when you're experiencing it, can seam elusive.
Then there are the sheer physical characteristics of his voice and the incredible leaps he took at stylizing it. From "kent" to "Hagnesta Hill", until "Chans" where he reached a plateau of almost intolerable sweetness, just gliding. He basically draws a little fade out curve at the end of every vowl in that first verse, it's incredibly smooth, like he's using Pro Tools on his own voice while he sings. It's a sound with no unpleasant characteristics, not even it's own flawlessness, it's rugged soul vacuum wrapped in perfection. And to think, it's all recorded with great microphones and in perfect bitrate, stored forever! It's the stylization really, in the end, I think. That makes it possible. Stylization is EVERYTHING for a voice. The character, the plaintive little turns, the way you can mold your singing voice, finding new spots in your throat, new emotions, distances from the mic when you sing. That's what the song competition Beyonce style divas never have. They forego the tremendous time and self analysis it takes to create a very special voice. Everyone thinks it's muscle and technique, but that's just a small part of it. Anyone can yell at a certain frequency. Magic is mostly style. Acting even. He came up with this tremendous styling that fit the swedish language better than anyone could have imagined. It was like a real discovery. They must have shat themselves when they started finding out how good their singer is becomingin the late 90s.
Also, Sweden in the 90s was a very special place to be and it just reflects that reality too. An envoy of a true Civilization there, before they fucked up.
Of course, Jocke is not the first person to develop an unprecedented stylistic approach to his singing language. I think every language probably has a Jocke. This is Tõnu Trubetsky, an Estonian singer who did the same thing for an infinitely smaller, infinitely more limited language. My language:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j281pAmkoY
I just lost my mind, when I heard the thing I use to think could sound like that. You fucking bet the lyrics are incredibly good too. Honestly, I think that band had the best lyrics of all time. They employed an entire army of poets, around THIRTY POETS wrote their texts, then the guy made them sound like that. I gave all I had to be the thirty first, in a way. But there's an end term to working within a limited space in an entirely open, unlimited world. You just hit the ceiling. It's a testament to the hidden size of the swedish-speaking world that kent could go on for so long until they hit theirs.
In short, screw the english versions I think
Senast redigerat av Kurvitz den 2016-05-28 klockan 06:20.
I like the sound of the brotherhood.
Of course, Jocke is not the first person to develop an unprecedented stylistic approach to his singing language. I think every language probably has a Jocke. This is Tõnu Trubetsky, an Estonian singer who did the same thing for an infinitely smaller, infinitely more limited language. My language:
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Thanks for the interesting link and I completely agree with Kurvitz: Glad they got back to Swedish!! All the magic is gone on the English versions of Isola and Hagnesta Hill. The translations sound forced and out of place. The mysteriousness and sound of the swedish language adds to the magic of the songwriting. I have the impression that it helps when you know the language a little and you know what the songs are about (although this is difficult sometimes, even for swedes I think...).
Its the reason why I have so much respect for Kent: they never sold out, always kept true to themselves and their public.
There's only question that has been puzzling me: what would have happened if the record company made some promotion for the swedish Kent-albums in countries like Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland...
Me too. We have this huge cultural / geopolitical distortion, where the US and the UK (english speaking countries) act as gatekeepers for world culture. It's an "if you can't make it here you can't make it anywhere" scenario. It's hard to predict what the reality of people's interests underneath angloamerican culture monopoly actually looks like. A good time to test it would have been Vapen & Ammunition. Both "Dom Andra" and "Karläken Väntar" are absolutely universal pop songs that, to my experience, work on everyone. Also, their swedishness works to their advantage, it's part of why they have such piercing power. On the other hand such a strategy -- forget about the english speaking world and let's push this indie band to continental Europe -- is so outlandish you could never have sold it to a record company.
The simple fact that singing in anything but English is pretty much prohibited globally, has done so much harm to music in general. It means pop music is not the globally inclusive party David Bowie, John Lennon and the Boomer Generation heroes sold us, but a strategy for agloamerican soft power domination. I remember when the western music press were all talking about post punk in the mid 00s. Everything was post punk this, post punk that, Interpol, Editors, Bloc Party, all indebted to Joy Division bla bla, yadda yadda. No one even once mentioned the Soviet post punk band Kino, without a doubt the most widely popular post punk band in the history of music. Known and beloved by literally hundreds of millions of people from Russia and the Eastern Block. In the west, it's like they never existed.
They were gods in the Soviet Union of the 80s, just like kent were / are gods in Scandinavia now. And for a reason too, Kino is one of the greatest bands of all time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg7BFXss1hE
Senast redigerat av Kurvitz den 2016-06-24 klockan 11:21.
Interesting point! And thanks for the Kino advice!!!
It is indeed strange why everything has to be in English! On the other hand an artist like Stromae is hugely succesful in non-French speaking countries. People seem to put some effort in trying to understand what the man is singing about. And what about Sigur Ros, Kaizers Orchestra, Eros Rammazotti, Manu Chao? Or even Korpiklaani and -hell- Boten Anna!! It IS possible to be succesful abroad in a non-English language!
Moreover; swedish is a German language, with lots of references to follow.
These items, combined with the magic of the Swedish language itself, the cryptic lyrics and the atmosphere of the songs seem to me like at least a chance for an ineternational breakthrough... But alas, it is too late now
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