Bike Songs Sung in Another Tongue
Imported bike parts with exotic-sounding foreign names have always had an allure to the English-speaking cyclist. It should come as no surprise that some of the best songs about cycling aren’t sung in English.
In the jaunty bell-ringing “Cycling is Fun,” Japanese popstrels Shonen Knife celebrate escape into an innocent world (“Riding on a bicycle together / We could ride forever”). Decades earlier, French crooner Yves Montand evoked the yearning of teenage love on the byways of rural France in “A Bicyclette.” In the 1970s, Simone, a Brazilian singer and former women’s professional basketball player, had a hit with the perky and child-friendly “A Bicicleta” (“Body in the wind / Your thoughts free in the air”).
Hailing from Berlin, Culcha Candela’s blend of dancehall, reggae and hip hop is sung variously in German, Spanish and Jamaican patois. ‘La Bicicleta’ tells of the anguish of a stolen bicycle (“My steel horse has always been my buddy”). Kraftwerk’s ‘Tour De France’ conveys the simple harmony of man and machine that the German godfathers of electro-pop found so appealing (“Puncture on the cobblestones / The bicycle is repaired quickly / The peloton regroups / Comrades and friendship”).
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