When I was abroad last semester, I discovered that American artists are extremely popular in Britain. I had hoped to gain some new music while over there, but in a London souvenir shop on my very first weekend, I found myself listening to Enrique Iglesias’s “Do You Know? (The Ping Pong Song).” In pubs and on the radio, I’d often hear hit singles by The Fray or Kelly Clarkson. I did come across some “native” British music. There was a guitarist in Covent Garden in London playing Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” and a few radio advertisements for Morrissey, a British singer and songwriter I happened to discover about a year before going abroad. (You might be familiar with him from The Smiths. He also recently released a new album.) On one of our last weekends, my friends and I heard one of Coldplay's old albums playing in a pub in Salisbury. It was one of those depressing ones where all the tracks sound the same. (Until “Viva La Vida” I was not a Coldplay fan, so my apologies to any Coldplay fans. They are not my taste.) But although I know those bands are native to England, I was still disappointed that I didn't hear anything radically unfamiliar. It seems that America and England have done an equal trade in band popularity.
But one of my theatre/literature classes led me to discover an intriguing medley of music in the play The Convict’s Opera, which is a modern adaptation of John Gay’s play The Beggar’s Opera. It was one of the first ballad operas of its time (circa 1728.) But The Convict’s Opera, which I was fortunate enough to see in Oxford, uses such modern day songs as “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers and Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” the latter of which included lyrics such as “With one eye in the looking glass” instead of “With one eye in the mirror.” But interestingly enough, my professors had never heard of The Proclaimers or of their one hit single. Maybe some of you have never heard of it, but it was a popular song in its day, and it even earned mention on Family Guy, albeit in a cut-away gag. I really loved The Convict’s Opera because it mimicked John Gay’s plot while including a modern twist, featuring prisoners on a ship bound for New South Wales who must put on a performance to keep up morale on their voyage, which is where the ballads come in.
Another of my musical discoveries abroad was a real attraction to French pop music. I spent Easter weekend in Paris, and on our first night my roommate and I took a walk to a corner pizzeria not far from our hostel. While our (very delicious) pizza was being made before us, I walked over to listen to the radio playing in the corner and take a peek at the stack of French CDs beside it. One problem: I don’t speak or read French, so I don’t know what the CDs were and I don’t know what the radio DJ was saying about the songs. Whatever those songs were, though, they were extremely catchy. I don’t care that I don’t understand a word of French—music is music. I still got the general idea with the beat and tone of voice. I have taken to searching for French pop music on iTunes, but with little luck so far. I did look into the French artist Camille, who did the single “Le festin” for the 2007 Disney/Pixar film Ratatouille. I have several of her albums now but (of course) have not yet managed to listen to them in full.
But the gem of my musical discoveries abroad is an album I bought in my favorite country in the United Kingdom—Scotland. I first heard this album in a souvenir shop in Edinburgh just across the street from our hotel. As I was flipping through racks of plaid hats, kilts, and flags bearing the crests of Scottish clans, I realized that I knew the tune playing—though it was only bagpipes. I turned to my friend and said, “Doesn’t this sound like ‘We Will Rock You’?” And she agreed that, yes, it did. I wanted desperately to know where I could find a bagpipe rendition of “We Will Rock You,” but I didn’t know how I would go about that. Maybe, I thought, I was just missing America and merely imagined that those bagpipes sounded like “We Will Rock You.” That was until the next song sounded suspiciously like “Eye of the Tiger.” I couldn't have mistaken both, despite the bagpipes.
Yes, it turns out that Scotland is home to a very wonderful band called the Red Hot Chilli Pipers (with two L’s in “Chilli”) who play such famous American hits as those I’ve mentioned, as well as Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water” (which incidentally is the first song I learned to play on guitar.) The next day in the Edinburgh Castle gift shop, I heard those familiar bagpipe songs again, and this time I was able to find a rack of CDs and was ecstatic to buy the Pipers’ Blast Live album, which features the American cover songs as well as some Scottish songs, such as “Hills of Argyll” and “Celtic Bolero.” It’s an interesting medley, but endlessly creative and delightful to listen to. For weeks after I returned to my college in Oxfordshire, I would sit in one of the libraries and hear from various other rooms the strains of bagpipes playing “We Will Rock You”—it seems that many of my fellow classmates discovered and loved the Red Hot Chilli Pipers as well. Even if you don’t like bagpipe music (and frankly, before finding the Pipers, I wasn’t too fond of it) you should check out their albums, which are also available on iTunes.
Happy listening,
Emily Noel
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