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Mind Your Language!

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Fraser McAlpine | 17:21 UK time, Thursday, 3 May 2007

avril

Being a pop star is clearly a lot harder than it looks. It takes a special kind of person to look good while jumping up and down like a happy meercat on a hotplate. It takes an even more special kind of person to do that and sing at the same time, without getting puffed out or sweating too much. And it takes an EVEN MORE special kind of person to do all this and make it look like fun and not aerobics.

That's before we even factor in stuff like 'talent', 'charisma' and 'having the X-Factor'...

So imagine the level of superhuman amazingness you have to have in order to perform all these tasks, still smiling, AND change all the words to your song into a foreign language? And then another one? And another one? I mean I thought I was clever when I worked out how to pat my head and rub my tummy, but this is taking discipline to a WHOLE. NEW. LEVEL.

So, hats off to Avril Lavigne, who has not only made THE pop comeback of the year (so far, we're still crossing fingers for the Spice Girls after all...) but seems to be so committed to taking it all the way that she's recorded the chorus of 'Girlfriend' in other languages, so that people of different cultures can also enjoy her unique brand of grumpy cheerleader pop.

How many other languages, you ask? Well, there's French, German, Mandarin, Portugese, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. That's seven. SEVEN, I TELL YOU.

Granted, all she has had to translate into these seven (SEVEN!) languages are the lines:

"Hey, hey, you, you, I don't like your girlfriend,
No way, no way, I think you need a new one
Hey, hey, you, you, I could be your girlfriend"

...so she's not exactly Stephen Hawking. But then, can Stephen Hawking claim to ROCK a CROWD in a tartan mini-skirt?

No, people, he can not.

Anyway, Av's been telling reporters all about her multi-lingual ordeal. She said: "The hardest one was actually Mandarin. Japanese was easy, sort of. French was easy, but German was difficult."

Everyone got that? Mandarin hard...Japanese easy...

She went on: "But it was cool to record it in different languages because I have so many fans worldwide that speak all these languages. So I'm glad I did it."

OK, Hawking, the ball's in your court now. Get practising!

Comments

  1. At 01:24 PM on 05 May 2007, tia wrote:

    mandarin one is funny!

  2. At 06:33 PM on 11 May 2007, Kimberley wrote:

    Can you even imagine Stephen Hawking singing?!!! With the right song, that actually could be hilarious.
    But I have to agree that he probably couldn't do it in seven other languages. So good job Avril for singing 3 lines in some foreign languages. :)

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