Dutch: K3 - '10,000 Luchtballonnen'

Title: '10,000 Balloons'. K3 started off in 1998 as the Flemish answer to the Spice Girls. Since then the original members have all left one by one so that the band you see today is the same in name only.

Pilot episode

I love listening to music in various languages, but it's often difficult to know where to look for new music in languages other than English, especially here in the UK where the mainstream media pretends that other languages simply don't exist.

So I've started this blog to give an accessible English language gateway to music in other, mainly European, languages.

It's mainly going to be about the music, so let's start with a sample from across the continent, starting with the great Unheilig from Germany, singing 'Wir sind alle wie eins' (We are all as one) of course in German:

Can you believe the great German public turned down the opportunity to send that to Eurovision? Schockierend! The Eurovision Song Contest and its various national selection processes are a big source of my foreign language music.

Let's go to Sweden, home of mighty Melodifestivalen, arguably bigger than Eurovision itself! Here's living legend Linda Bengtzing singing 'Ta Mig' (Take Me) live at Melfest Semifinal 4 in 2014:

Melodifestivalen is incidentally what inspired the name of this blog. In 2015 there were 7 songs per semi final, with the most hotly tipped song appearing as 'song number 7', which when said in Swedish sounds a bit like 'Melody Shoe'.

To France now, with Black M's huge hit from last year, 'Sur Ma Route' (On My Way):

To round of this first post, here with helpful English subtitles is the Netherlands' Ruth Jacott with 'Vrede' (Peace):

I welcome your comments and suggestions for songs and languages you'd like to see me feature. E-mail me on sotonbus@googlemail.com

Thanks for watching!