Less Politics, More Rock 'n' Roll - 10 Franco-Canadian Artists Worth Getting To Know

Between the Quebec Liberal Party's triumphant return to power in April to the Montreal Canadiens' inspiring run at the Stanley Cup (alas no more), something interesting has happened in Canada in the first half of this year: English-speaking Canadians seem to be rediscovering a love for La Belle Province.

What a difference a year makes! A year ago the rest of Canada seemed to have all but given up on Quebec. From the standpoint of most English Canadian media outlets, Quebec was a basket case mired in cultural and political isolationism, economic dysfunction and an alarming xenophobic streak in the form of the Parti Québécois' so-called "Values Charter" that would have passed a raft of laws against public displays of hijabs, turbans and other religious accoutrements. At the peak of the Values Charter debate, Western Canadian animosity towards Quebec was reaching such a fever pitch that it appeared a "yes" vote on sovereignty would actually be welcomed by many.

Today, however, the mood appears quite different. Canadians coast to coast cheered as the myopic, mean-spirited PQ government of Pauline Marois crashed and burned in April's election and mild-mannered brain surgeon Phillippe Couillard took the reins in Quebec City. All of a sudden National Post, a paper that can normally be counted on to blast Quebec's provincial leadership, started printing articles with titles like "Time to take Quebec seriously again" and whatnot. Even the Sun Network (once led by would-be PQ Sith Lord Pierre Karl Péladeau) has softened its usual anti-Quebec stance.

All of this is of course music to the ears of western Canadian Francophiles like myself. At the same time, though, we've seen enough of this teeter-totter in Anglo-Franco Canadian internal relations to know that if we're to build a bona fide bridge between Canada's two "solitudes" we need to try something different. My modest proposal, and one that's a win-win for everybody in my opinion, is that Anglophone Canadians can start by not only getting to know Quebec's lively homegrown music scene, but genuinely embracing it as part of a greater Canadian scene.

The fact is, in spite of all of Quebec's current problems - a moribund economy, rising unemployment, skyrocketing provincial debt, ugly (and still lingering) ethnocultural friction and the ever-present spectre of separatism and language politics, Quebec's cultural scene, and in particular its music scene, is as vibrant as it's ever been. Trouble is, almost nobody west of the Ottawa River knows this, as Francophone artists hardly get any radio play outside Quebec - and Quebec artists (understandably) feel it's more worth their time and effort booking tours in France and Belgium than in Alberta or BC.

It's a real tragedy - and a really unnecessary one at that. Unlike French-language TV and movies, which is unlikely to develop a significant following outside the French-speaking world, music has the well-demonstrated capacity to travel well outside their geolinguistic roots. Back in the fall of 2012 I wrote a post about the history of foreign language hits within the English-speaking world, including one of the few French-Canadian pop hits to ever hit the Anglo-Canadian charts, Mitsou's extremely silly but equally catchy 1988 hit 'Bye Bye Mon Cowboy'. (To Anglos she's a one-hit wonder; to Quebeckers she's a pop icon and the granddaughter of a legendary playwright who's still in the public eye as a TV host.)

The real paradox of Anglophone Canada's complicated relationship with the country's rogue province is that Anglos love visiting Quebec, especially the city of Montreal, especially in summer when the city's bazillion performing arts festival are in full swing. But as much as the rest of Canada has a love-in for Montreal's cultural scene, they tend to regard it as a foreign country - basically Paris except you don't need a passport to travel there. The result of this, of course, is that while Just for Laughs, Osheaga, the Montreal Jazz Festival and other cultural extravaganzas are well attended by non-Quebeckers, the province's homegrown acts (unless they're English language acts) are completely overlooked. Why is this? If a nerdy-looking Korean rapper can command the attention of English-speaking Canadians, why not our fellow passport-holders east of the Rideau?

My theory is that English Canada's reluctance to embrace French Canadian artists is rooted, at least in part, in fear - fear of the unknown, fear of reproach from the other "solitude" for some sort of perceived cultural Philistinism. I suspect this goes both ways, which is why Quebecois bands and solo artists hardly ever make appearances in Canada's other major cities, even as they make appearances in Paris and Brussels. Quebec and English Canada are like a strained married couple who haven't had sex in far too long, and are now in marriage counselling and trying to make amends but each one is scared to make the first move in bed.

To my mind the best prophylactic against future sovereignty SNAFUs is a genuine cultural rapprochement, starting with a genuine embrace of Quebec's currently exciting Francophone music scene. In other words, less politics, more rock 'n' roll. And for those Anglos looking for a primer to get them started, here are ten very different acts worth getting to know.

1. Ariel

Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Glam Rock, Post-Punk, Electroclash
Recommended for fans of: T. Rex, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Libertines

Source: francophil.ca

Noisy, sassy and glamourous, Ariel is one of the most exciting rock bands on the Canadian scene today - and one that graphically illustrates Canada's linguistic problem when it comes to arts and culture. One of the freshest young rock acts in the country today, Ariel is virtually unknown in Canada outside La Belle Province in spite of a growing following in Paris and Brussels. Founded in 2007, this Montreal-based quintet is made up of members from across the province (including Baie-Comeau, Saguenay, Sherbrooke and Quebec City) and centred on a fetching, multitalented Richey Edwards lookalike named Ariel Coulombe.

Since the release of their 2010 debut album Après le crime, the grungy, synth-heavy glam punk of Coulombe and his gang have gained considerable critical acclaim for both their music and their outlandish music videos, including best emerging artist at the 2010 Osheaga festival and a Juno nomination for the video for "Chargez!" (see below). Their latest lineup for their brand new 2014 release Fauve features an unorthodox twin bass configuration and a darker sound overall, according to Coulombe in a recent interview. Having already established themselves as one of Montreal's most exciting young bands, the next obvious step would be a western Canadian tour.

Which, I should mention, I've already bugged them about on Facebook. So if you see these kids in a western Canadian city near you in the next little while, I say "de rien" in advance.

2. Jimmy Hunt

Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Folk Rock, Alt-Rock, Shoegaze
Recommended for fans of: Wilco, Bright Eyes, Mojave 3, Robert Charlebois

Source: jimmyhunt.bandcamp.com

Montreal is a busker's paradise, as anybody who has spent anytime there in the summer months will attest to. And indeed it has been this street music scene that has launched the careers of many a Quebecois singer-songwriter, including that of newcomer Jimmy Hunt, who in spite of his Anglo-sounding name is a thoroughly Francophone singer-songwriter very much out of the tradition of Robert Charlebois, Gilles Vigneault and other iconic Quebecois song crafters. After about 12 years as a guitar and harmonica-toting street busker, Hunt made his recording debut in the mid-2000s with the briefly successful alt-rock combo Chocolat before going solo with his distinctive blend of Dylanesque folk rock, twangy alt-country and synth-laden pop evoking everything from late-seventies Bowie to the early 1990s British shoegaze scene.

Like so many Quebec artists, Hunt's acclaim, while widespread in his own province, has largely ground to a halt at the provincial borders, forcing to look across the pond for touring opportunities. Which is a real pity given that his poetry remains firmly rooted in the scenery and vibes of the city of Montreal, particularly in his critically acclaimed latest album Maladie d'amour, which beautifully merges his many and varied musical influences. If anybody truly captures Montreal's inimitable street vibe, it's this guy. And Montreal, last time I checked, was still in Canada. So it would be worth the rest of Canada's time to give this Jimmy Hunt guy a chance.

3. Forêt

Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Dreampop, Trip Hop
Recommended for fans of: Cocteau Twins, Mazzy Star, Lamb, St. Vincent, Portishead

Source: journalmetrocom.files.wordpress.com

Montreal's rich musical legacy has generally come in two flavours: French and English, with the city's Francophone artists usually taking their cues from Paris and their Anglo counterparts from London and New York. But while the political divide between French and English Canada has never been more pronounced, there are signs that the artistic (or at least the musical) divide is starting to narrow. Case in point is the highly acclaimed new group Forêt, a group that's been lauded by numerous Quebec music critics as a breath of fresh air in the province's music scene. Unlike the electropop of groups like Le Couleur that hearken to Daft Punk, Stereolab and other continental artistes, vocalist Émilie Laforest and her group combine French-language lyrics with a very British sound evocative of Cocteau Twins' hypnotic dream pop and the melancholy trip hop of Portishead - one of the band's oft-stated seminal influences.

With Laforest's haunting, Liz Fraser-esque vocals and Joseph Marchard's shoegazey guitar work, Forêt is most definitely a departure from the music typically associated with La Belle Province. And as a brand new act (only a couple of years old), these trippy Montrealers make great candidates for some serious music bridge-building with the rest of Canada - if the rest of Canada can get over its phobia of French-language lyrics. But in the shoegaze/dream pop genre, the lyrics really don't matter much, do they? After all, is there a single Cocteau Twins or Slowdive song where the lyrics were actually intelligible?

4. Lisa LeBlanc

Origin: Rosaireville, NB
Style: Alt-Country, Blues Rock
Recommended for fans of: Dixie Chicks, Riff Cohen, Bonnie Raitt, Karen Zoid

Source: newslestudio1.files.wordpress.com

It should be noted at this point that La Belle Province is not the only provincial player in Canada's Francophone music scene. New Brunswick's 200,000-strong Acadian population (roughly a third of the province's population) has long had an outsized artistic presence, fired up by a turbulent history and a gnawing aggravation from having been forgotten about by both Quebec and English Canada in equal measure. While Acadian music remains, for most Canadians, synonymous with cheesemeister Roch Voisine, the Acadians' long tradition of great poetry has made Francophone New Brunswick a treasure trove of great singer-songwriters, including the late Angèle Arsenault, legendary hillbilly-hippy country star Réginald "Cayouche" Gagnon and the multitalented singer-poet-actor Marie-Jo Thério.

The latest addition to the ongoing Acadian musical love-in is the young and sassy Lisa LeBlanc and her unique brand of twangy, raunchy 'trash rock' delivered in the characteristic 'Chiac' dialect of northern New Brunswick - a blend of French, English and lumberjack drawl. At 23, LeBlanc is getting a great deal of exposure in the Francophone media, and her star is clearly rising. At any rate she should made a refreshing departure from Roch Voisine's suburban fromage.

5. Syncop

Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Worldbeat, Reggae
Recommended for fans of: Abdel Ali Slimani, Michael Franti, Riff Cohen, Asian Dub Foundation

Source: festivalnuitsdafrique.com

For a province that gets more than its share of flak from English Canada for its supposed isolationism and ethnocentrism, Quebec is a pretty diverse place. Roughly ten per cent of Quebec's population belongs to a visible minority, putting it smack dab in the middle of the provincial pack and only a tiny bit below the national average of 11 per cent. That said, Quebec's "ethnics" (to quote Jacques Parizeau) are disproportionately concentrated in the Montreal region (and to a lesser degree in Quebec City), with the 'Pure Laine' rural ridings, with their outsized electoral sway, ensuring that the xenophobes in the Parti Québécois have plenty of ethnocentric outrage to tap into. But even this is slowly weakening, as the latest provincial election results would suggest.

It's worth noting, particularly amid the recent anti-religious accoutrement hysteria in Quebec, that the province's third most widely spoken language (after French and English) is Arabic, a fact due primarily to immigration from the former French colonies in North Africa, as well as from former French Middle Eastern mandates Syria and Lebanon. Arab cultural influence is particularly evident in the city of Montreal, and is starting to find its way into the local scene thanks to worldbeat artists like Karim Benzaïd, the Algerian-born frontman of the popular Afro/Arab/reggae crossover project Syncop. Founded in 1998, Syncop mixes Berber-style raï and chaoui music together with reggae, hip hop and Afrobeat, with lyrics centred on the immigrant experience in Montreal. Their party vibe coupled with punny titles like Scirocco d'érable and Cabane à souk have made them festival favourites.

6. Ponctuation

Origin: Quebec City, QC
Style: Garage Rock, Punk
Recommended for fans of: The Who, The Cramps, Ramones, The White Stripes

Source: nightlife.ca

Thus far with the exception of Lisa LeBlanc this list has focussed solely on the city of Montreal, but with half of Quebec's population living outside the Montreal region, it's only fair that the rest of the province be given its due attention. Further up the St. Lawrence River in the province's eponymous capital city, a smaller but nonetheless energetic music scene has long churned out great artists, including iconic poet-musician-activists Félix Leclerc and Gilles Vigneault, legendary theatre artist Robert Lepage and, of course, Q-pop starlet-turned-media personality Mitsou. Having long been overshadowed by Montreal on the global music scene, Quebec City has, out of necessity, grown a scene all its own, but thanks to a thriving club scene and steady tourism revenue, the town continues to do well artistically.

One of Quebec City's most interesting current band is the gnarly garage rock duo Ponctuation, made up of brothers Guillaume and Maxime Chiasson. With Guillaume on guitar and vocals and Maxime on drums, Ponctuation's gritty analogue recordings and stripped down garage punk sound makes them one of the most refreshing rock acts to come out of anywhere in Canada in recent years - let alone poor, neglected Quebec City. Established in 2011, Ponctuation are definitely a band to watch - and yet another candidate for some welcome language divide-bridging.

7. Dubmatique

Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Hip Hop, Acid Jazz
Recommended for fans of: Gang Starr, Mos Def, MC Solaar

Source: lametropole.com

While French-language music in Quebec has generally taken its cues from across the Atlantic in France, one notable area of musical divergence between the two French-speaking "nations" in the domain of hip hop. Since its first appearance in the banlieues of Paris in the early 1980s, rap music has been embraced by the French (particularly within its Afro-Caribbean immigrant community) like few other countries, and today France is the world's second largest hip hop market after the US, with French rappers like MC Solaar, Doc Gynéco and La Fouine achieving international success. Quebec, on the other hand, has been much slower to embrace hip hop music and culture, perhaps out of a knee-jerk resistance to perceived Americanization. (Indeed MC Solaar among others have criticized their country's scene for being overly derivative of American hip hop.)

But while Montreal still miles behind Toronto as a hip hop city, beats and rhymes are on the rise in this increasingly cosmopolitan metropolis, thanks in large part to increased immigration from the same cultural influences that brought the genre to France. Among the scenes most notable pioneers are the duo Dubmatique, featuring the duo of Cameroonian-born Jérôme-Philippe "Disoul" Bélinga and Senegalese-born Ousmane "OT MC" Traoré. Founded in 1992, the group's acid jazz-infused freestyle and Solaar-esque word craft made them Canada's first commercially successful Francophone hip hop act. Today Disoul and OT remain Quebec's hip hop "elder statesmen" and are frequently called upon to speak about the state of the current Montreal scene.

8. Le Couleur

Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Synth Pop, Disco
Recommended for fans of: Dragonette, Daft Punk, M83, Depeche Mode, Serge Gainsbourg

Source: 3.bp.blogspot.com

Both Montreal and Buenos Aires vie for the title 'Paris of the western hemisphere'. Generally speaking Montreal hits closer to the mark - both in terms of language and pop culture proclivities. Quebec's largest city has long taken many of its cultural cues from Paris, and nowhere more so than in the former's long love for schmaltzy synth pop music. It was Montreal that gave the world synth pop icons Men Without Hats in the 1980s as well as bubblegum pop princess Mitsou, and the genre has continued to thrive in the city, inspired by the likes of Daft Punk, Air and M83 across the pond. The genre also spans the city's linguistic divide, featuring notable Anglo-Quebec artists like Chromeo and Vancouver-born Claire "Grimes" Boucher (just goes to show Francophone names can be deceptive - just ask Jimmy Hunt) as well as numerous Francophone standouts in the genre.

Newcomers Le Couleur are the latest exponents of a genre synonymous with Canada's sexiest metropolis. Bilingual, kitschy, sexy and unapologetically hipsterish, Le Couleur hearkens to late-1970s, early-1980s Eurotrash disco pop along the lines of Giorgio Moroder and Gainsbourg's Love on the Beat era, an influence further emphasized by vocalist Laurence Giroux-Do's lighter-than-air Jane Birkin-esque vocals. Established in 2008, this combo has a well established fan base in La Belle Province and has toured extensively in Europe, and this year have made inroads into the English-speaking world, albeit in the UK courtesy of Liverpool's Sound City Festival. Western Canada next? We can only hope.

9. Akitsa

Origin: Montreal, QC
Style: Black Metal
Recommended for fans of: Gorgoroth, Bathory, Burzum, Rudra

Source: metal-archives.com

I have to be honest here - I really can't tell the difference between all the myriad different sub-genres of extreme metal out there. While many of my best friends are metalheads and I certainly have an abiding respect for a music style that perhaps more than any other has managed to implant itself in virtually every part of the world, the evolutionary family tree of metal has become so dizzyingly complex (perhaps a reflection of its global ubiquitousness) that I really can't begin to tell the difference between so-called 'black metal' and other subgenres like 'doom metal', 'technical death metal', 'goregrind', 'deathgrind', 'mathcore', 'war metal', 'blackened death metal', 'seared and pan-fried trout metal in a white wine sauce' et cetera. So if you're one of my metalhead readers - and I know you guys are sensitive about people getting this taxonomy wrong - I would love a tutorial on how to navigate my way through this terminological labyrinth.

All I know for sure about the Montreal-based group Akitsa is that they are officially categorized as 'black metal', putting them in the same genre as the infamous Scandinavian noise merchants Gorgoroth, Bathory and Burzum that more or less defined the idiom. Other than that, all I could really ascertain about these guys is that they were founded in 1999 and are still apparently active (but with no locatable website), they have two permanent members (OT and Néant) who play 'all instruments', and that they 'sing' in French. C'est tout! The one interview I could find with the band, by some Finnish guy back in 2001, raises more questions than it answers. Anyone know more about these guys? I'm intrigued.

10. Samian

Origin: Abitibi-Témiscamingue, QC
Style: Hip Hop
Recommended for fans of: Rezofficial, Eekwol, Eminem

Source: hebdosregionaux.ca

Quebec's Aboriginal population may only be two per cent of the province's total (Alberta's is over five per cent), but the province's ten First Nations and 13 Inuit settlements have long punched above their weight politically thanks to their vastness of their traditional lands, which represent over half of Quebec's total territory. Quebec's Aboriginal leaders have historically never been afraid to assert themselves in the face of provincial governments indifferent to their cultural and economic needs and desires (including an ongoing threat to 'separate' from Quebec in the case of a vote to withdraw from Confederation), up to and including armed standoffs with the provincial police. That said, the post-Oka story of Aboriginal relations in La Belle Province has been relatively serene, and while many of the province's more isolated indigenous communities remain mired in poverty and social ills, many other communities have enjoyed steady economic growth and improving quality of life indicators.

While Aboriginal artists' impact on Quebec's music scene has generally been limited, the most notable exception in recent decades has been the acclaimed Innu folk rock duo Kashtin, whose trilingual (French, English and Innu) songs gained brief international fame thanks to Robbie Robertson's 1994 album Music for the Native Americans and cameos in the soundtracks for shows like Northern Exposure and Due South and the Bruce McDonald rez drama Dance Me Outside. Currently the province's fastest rising Aboriginal star is young rapper Samuel Tremblay better known by the stage name Samian. A member of the Abitibiwinni First Nation north of Val-d'Or in western Quebec, Samian raps in French and Algonquin and achieved a critical breakthrough in 2010 thanks to an appearance at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. With two albums and concert appearances in Europe and China under his belt, this Franco-Algonquin hip hop star is definitely worth following.

Bonne écoute!

Before Gangnam Style - 10 Great Foreign Language Hits From Across History

We've all heard it a bazillion times now and seen the video nearly as many times. The English-speaking world is now thoroughly in love, or at least fascinated, by Park Jae-sang, the South Korean rapper-pop star better known to the world as PSY, thanks to his ridiculously infectious hit song about life in the South Korean capital's most chi-chi suburb. It's still early to say but 'Gangnam Style' is showing signs of being an epoch-defining pop icon to compare with Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' three decades previous, with PSY's patented equestrian-themed dance move emerging as the 'moonwalk' of the 2010s. As of November 24, Gangnam Style had achieved 806.3 million views, making it the single most watched video in YouTube history.

The global phenomenon of Gangnam Style is all the more remarkable given that the song in question is in Korean. Granted, K-Pop is far from an unknown phenomenon throughout East Asia, where the past decade has seen this mighty-mouse republic emerge as a veritable pop culture powerhouse, in the western world the Republic of Korea, while well respected for its high-tech gadgetry and formidable industrial economy, is hardly seen as a country on the cutting edge of cool. Or at least until PSY showed up. However, it's doubtful that the Gangnam Style craze will lead to the K-Wave spreading beyond Korea's backyard, as foreign-language hits in the Anglosphere have overwhelmingly been one-hit wonders - briefly beloved and then quickly forgotten.

The cruelty of this, of course, is that non-Anglophone popular music acts have long been forced to produce English-language material if they're to have any hope of branching far beyond their homelands. (This is notably not the case for Spanish-language acts, for whom a wide-ranging audience from Madrid to Miami to Montevideo is primed for their material.) Bands from non-English-speaking countries have ranged from pop acts like Roxette and t.A.T.u. to metal bands like Sepultura and the Scorpions, whose only commonality is the fact that they've all adopted the language of Shakespeare and Elvis Presley with the hopes of branching beyond their native lands.

Baku Style: Eurovision winners Eldar and Nigar

What is the consequence of this? Ever tune into the Eurovision song contest before? This cultural institution is a fascinating study of what happens when you take the cream of the entertainment industry in an ill-defined region stretching from Scandinavia to the Caucasus and make them all sing in the lingua franca of contemporary pop music. And while many of the results of this are actually quite impressive, as was the Eldar & Nigar hit 'Running Scared' which won the Republic of Azerbaijan its first Eurovision title in 2011, it still manages to feel somewhat disconnected with reality, like a cross between MTV and Berlitz. Imagine, for the sake of comparison, if Michael Jackson had been forced to deliver his entire act in, say, Danish. Actually, that would be pretty cool.

But there's more reason for the English-speaking work to embrace foreign-language music than it simply being just deserts. By effectively excluding non-English-language songs, English speakers are missing out on a vast amount of great music as well as lyrics which, with the aid of liner notes, can be appreciated almost as deeply as lyrics in one's own language. Singer-songwriters like Caetano Veloso, Salman Ahmad and Shokichi Kina are poets comparable to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, and yet are virtually unknown to Anglo audiences - much to their loss. The bittersweet love songs of Charles Aznavour pack a punch even without translation, as do the haunting vocals of Mercedes Sosa and the rapturous glory of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Granted you can't necessarily understand the songs, but the continued popularity of mumbling rockers like Dylan and Dave Matthews must mean that incomprehensibility isn't necessarily a barrier to popular appeal.

Of course there have indeed been foreign-language crossover hits over the years. The curious thing about them, though, is they seem to have become less frequent over the decades. As our world has become more globalized, popular music tastes in the Anglo-American world seem to have gone in the opposite direction, Gangnam Style notwithstanding. There was once a time when the songs of Édith Piaf and Yves Montand were standard fare on English radio, and iconic Latin American songs like La Bamba and Guantanamera were beloved in the US at a time of anti-Latino bigotry was far fiercer and more overt than that it is today. Why is it now that now, when our society is arguably more tolerant and more diverse than it's ever been, there seems to be more resistance than ever to foreign language songs? Resistance to an ever-encroaching outside world? I don't get it.

My feeling, however, is that this will shift soon, probably within the next decade. While English remains the de facto language of globalization, the Anglo-American world no longer maintains an undisputed monopoly over the diffusion of popular culture. PSY's homeland is a perfect case in point - a country that 50 years ago was a war-ravaged basket case but is now one of the leading forces not only in global commerce but also in popular culture, in everything from RPG gaming culture to melodramatic soaps with a following stretching from Japan to Indonesia. Brazil's homegrown pop music scene has long had a following in the Lusophone world; look for this emerging world power to flex its creative muscle. And as los Estados Unidos becomes an increasingly bilingual country, the presence of Spanish-language music can only grow.

In the meantime, here are 10 classic foreign-language songs that, for whatever reason, beat the odds and took the English-speaking world by storm.

1) Édith Piaf, 'La Vie en rose' (1947)

An oldie among foreign language crossover fans, Édith Piaf's iconic 1947 hit about seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses is probably the most quintessentially French song after 'La Marseillaise' (which Serge Gainsbourg famously profaned with his reggae cover of it on Aux Armes Et Caetera). With a melody by composer Louis Guglielmi and lyrics by Piaf herself, the song sold over a million copies in the United States (Imagine what Fox News would have had to say about it had they been around at the time?), while reaching #1 status in Italy in 1948 and #9 in Brazil the following year. It has also shown tremendous lasting power, having since been covered by everyone from Liza Minelli to Cyndi Lauper to, curiously enough, Iggy Pop. La vie est toujours en rose.

2) Domenico Modugno, 'Nel blu dipinto di blu (Volare)' (1958)

A curious thing often happens to foreign language songs that catch on in the English-speaking world - they change titles. Such was the case with Italian crooner Domenico Modugno's 1958 hit 'Nel blu dipinto di blu' ('In the Blue, Painted Blue'), a song that became known outside Italy as 'Volare' ('To Fly'), after the song's famous refrain. Inspired by a pair of paintings by Marc Chagall, the song won third place at the 1958 the Eurovision Song Contest and then spent five weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. It has since been covered by Dean Martin, Al Martino, David Bowie, Gipsy Kings and Barry White, and also made a memorable appearance in the movie A Fish Called Wanda as part of Kevin Kline's mock-Italian bedroom talk.

3) Ritchie Valens, 'La Bamba' (1958)

The song that put Latin America on the rock 'n' roll map, this classic folk song from Veracruz was immortalized by teenage Chicano rock legend Richard Valenzuela, better known as Ritchie Valens, otherwise best known for his death at age 17 in the 1959 plane crash that also took the lives of Buddy Holly and J.P. 'The Big Bopper' Richardson. The song reached #22 on the US Billboard Pop Singles, an unprecedented feat for a Spanish-language song, and finally reached #1 in 1987 thanks to LA Chicano rock band Los Lobos' cover of it for the eponymous Luis Valdez biopic starring Lou Diamond Phillips. It remains the only non-English-language song on Rolling Stone Magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.

4) Kyu Sakamoto, 'Ue o Muite Arukō' aka 'Sukiyaki' (1961)

In 1963, British record executive Louis Benjamin travelled to Japan where he fell under the spell of young crooner Kyu Sakamoto and his sweetly sentimental ballad 'Ue o Muite Arukō' ('Walking While Looking Up'). The song became an overnight sensation in the west under the name 'Sukiyaki' in spite of the exactly zero references to simmered beef in the song. (Benjamin presumably figured it was the only non-militaristic Japanese word his audience knew.) The song sold over one million copies in the US and reached #1 status in June of 1963, and to this day remains the only Japanese song to reach #1 on the US Billboard charts. In an interesting parallel to Valens, 'Kyu-chan' was also killed in a plane crash - in the infamous crash of JAL Flight 123 in 1985 - and was also posthumously immortalized in a motion picture named after his greatest known hit.
 
5) João & Astrud Gilberto, 'Garota de Ipanema (The Girl from Ipanema)' (1964) 

When Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Jobim and renowned diplomat-poet Vinicius de Moraes sat down to write their now-famous voyeuristic paean about beauty and heartache in Rio de Janeiro's ritziest beachfront neighbourhood (think Gangnam Style on valium), they must have felt fairly assured of a hit. Nothing, however, could have presaged the phenomenal success of 'The Girl from Ipanema', a song that almost singlehandedly popularized bossa nova beyond Brazil thanks the Grammy Award-winning 1965 recording of it starring João and Astrud Gilberto together with American tenor saxophonist Stan Getz. Nearly a half-century old now, it is believed to be the second-most recorded pop song in history after the Beatles' 'Yesterday' and one that, like 'La Vie en rose', has become an unofficial anthem of the country that gave life to it.

6) Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin, 'Je t'aime… moi non plus' (1969)

In addition to being one of the most famous foreign language crossover hits of all time, French bad-boy chansonnier Serge Gainsbourg's ode to...well, fucking holds the distinction of being one of the world's most widely banned songs. Originally written for and sung with actress Brigitte Bardot in 1967 (whose husband refused to allow it to be released), it was re-recorded by Gainsbourg and his then-lover Jane Birkin two years later on the appropriately titled album '69 Année érotique. Chiefly remembered for Birkin's heavy breathing and simulated climaxing, the song was banned in a swath of European countries, with the Vatican allegedly excommunicating the Italian record executive who oversaw its release in Italy. Suffice it to say, the Papal PR campaign on behalf of the song did wonders for it, helping it top the UK charts and sell over 4 million copies by 1986.

7) Falco, 'Rock Me Amadeus' (1985)
 
If there's one song that truly presaged the arrival of Gangnam Style, it's Johann 'Falco' Hölzel's 1985 rap homage to his country's best-known musical export. Originally a bass player with the late-1970s-early 1980s Austrian hard rock-punk outfit Drahdiwaberl, Falco established himself as a solo artist in 1982 with the rock-rap hit 'Der Kommissar' ('The Inspector') before rocketing to worldwide renown with his campy Mozart-themed hit, accompanied by an over-the-top video that gives PSY a run for his money. Boosted by the success of the 1984 biopic Amadeus, 'Rock Me Amadeus' reached #1 in Canada, the UK and the US, where he was the first German-speaking artist to reach such heights. Largely disappearing from the scene thereafter, Falco died in a car crash in 1998 - supposedly as he was mounting a comeback.

8) Mitsou, 'Bye Bye Mon Cowboy' (1988)
 
The divide between Canada's 'Two Solitudes' is nowhere more pronounced than in popular music. French and English-Canadian music typically occupy very separate spheres and Francophone artists such as Céline Dion and Roch Voisine have had to switch languages to get any success outside Québec. One of the few Québécois artists to breach the language firewall was teen pop star Mitsou Annie Marie Gélinas, the granddaughter of renowned playwright Gratien Gélinas, whose breakthrough hit 'Bye Bye Mon Cowboy' became a rare smash hit across Canada, selling over 100,000 copies. (The fact that the only French word in the title is 'mon' may have helped.) Like Falco, Mitsou had a difficult time replicating her early success, although she continues to be a prominent media personality in La Belle Province.

9) Los del Río, 'Macarena' (1995)
 
Sigh. Anyone who came of age in the 1990s had to endure dance parties wherein, apparently under the spell of some malevolent spirit of the airwaves, otherwise normal people would cease whatever they were doing and perform a mime-dance that could only be likened to a cross between the YMCA and a border-patrol body search. And yet, the song that inflicted this craze on the world really wasn't that bad - at least at the outset. Originally written and recorded by the Seville-based Latin pop duo Los del Río, the original acoustic guitar-based dance number didn't become a craze until the Bayside Boys turned it into a club mix in 1995. The single spent 14 weeks at number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, one of the longest runs atop the Hot 100 chart in history, was was ranked the '#1 Greatest One-Hit Wonder of all Time' by VH1 in 2002. And still nobody knows why.

10) Rammstein, 'Du hast' (1997)

There's something about the German language that seems to lend itself to industrial rock, as exemplied by veteran sonic terrorists like Die Krupps, KMFDM and Einstürzende Neubauten. While little of this has had any mainstream exposure, industrial rock experienced a brief surge in popularity in the mid-1990s thanks to the success of Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, which also opened the door to Berlin-based industrial metalheads Rammstein. The group's 1997 hit 'Du hast' (a play on words meaning both 'You Have' and 'You Hate') gained international prominence thanks to its inclusion on the soundtrack for The Matrix, briefly reaching #2 status on Canada's Alternative Rock charts. At yet we still make fun of the Germans.

Is there anything important I've missed here? I'd love to hear about it.