Squeeze Covered – Tempted (Tentaciones)

A couple of months ago, I was dining with my family in an Italian restaurant ahead of seeing Paloma Faith in concert (she was very good, by the way). The background music in the restaurant seemed vaguely familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on why I recognised it or where I’d heard it before as my knowledge of Italian pop music is very limited. It was only after we had left the restaurant and were making our way to the York Barbican Centre that I twigged that the song I’d heard was a cover of the recent Madness release “Never Knew Your Name”. I’ve tracked it down on YouTube so, if you’re interested, it’s called “Mai saputo il tuo nome” by Tiromancino and can be found here.

I guess there must be thousands of foreign language covers of English language songs and visa-versa not to mention the foreign language alternative versions done by the original artist, for example, “99 Red Balloons” by Nena or “Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand” by The Beatles. I think it’s a shame that foreign language songs have to be rewritten in English to suit the home market as, quite often, the original lyric is lost because it doesn’t rhyme or scan and consequently you lose some of the original song’s soul. In addition, some songs just sound a lot better in their original tongue.

I can’t imagine that many of Chris Difford’s lyrics are easily translatable without losing their meaning or humour, though I would love to hear a version of “[[Temptation For Love]]” sung in Spanish or Italian.

This week’s cover is a jazzed up, reggae version of the Squeeze classic “[[Tempted]]” by the Spanish band Danza Invisible and I have to confess that I quite like it.

I’ve come across two other foreign language covers so far which I intend featuring in future posts but if you know of more then please get in touch as I’d love to hear them.

Until the next time, toodle pip!

Tyrone