Multilingual Song

A Multilingual Song is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: a song whose lyrics are in two, or sometimes more, languages. It's not just random bits of Gratuitous English or Gratuitous Foreign Language sprinkled into the lyrics, but full on verses that are in separate languages.

This type of song is most common in areas where most of the audience is bilingual, thus they're able to understand the lyrics. It however isn't uncommon for songs to feature multiple languages to add spice to them or reflect the singers' backgrounds.

In film or theater examples, the bilingual lyrics can also reflect the plot or setting of the story.

Compare to Bilingual Bonus. The Other Wiki has a fuller list of multilingual songs.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A television ad from The '60s for Coca Cola has people of various nationalities sing "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" in their native language while coming together on a grassy hill.

Anime & Manga

• Yoko Kanno lives and breathes this trope, as multilingual lyrics are part of her signature Genre-Busting musical stylings. As such, she has incorporated them into numerous anime soundtracks.
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex:
    • "Inner Universe" combines Russian, English, and Latin.
    • "Rise" switches between Russian and English.
    • "Velveteen" switches between English and Italian.
    • "Player" is mostly sung in Russian, but features a full rap verse in English.
  • The aptly titled "Genesis of Aquarion" starts off in Japanese before moving into full English with the Japanese word ai shiteru ("I love you") peppered in the refrain.
    All this time these twelve thousand years, I know, ai shiteru!
    Eight thousand years from the time that I've met you, my love grows strong than ever before
    Words can't say of this time I've been waiting to share my love with you
    I'd give you my life, I would give you the world to see you smiling every day
    One hundred million and two thousand years from now, ai shiteiru!
    I want you to know since you came in my life every day, every night you give light into the darkest skies.
  • "The Garden of Everything" from RahXephon is a duet between English singer Steve Conte and Japanese singer Maaya Sakamoto. The later portions of the song features both of them singing a round with each other in their own languages.
  • "Voices" from Macross Plus is mostly sung in Japanese, but the chorus kicks in with a full verse in English halfway into the song before going back to Japanese to finish out.
• Quell's music often makes use of (character) leader Shu Izumi's English ability (shared with his voice actor Shunsuke Takeuchi). But they go even further than that, featuring a variety of other languages, from Spanish love lines to Sanskrit mantras. Their song "Fata Morgana" uses seven languages.
• Procellarum's You Haduki is played by Tetsuya Kakihara, who is fluent in German, so You's songs often include some German even though there's no real reason for his character to use it. His first solo song is called "Genau" (approximately "okay"), and it became something of a catch phrase for him, repeated in one of his duet songs with his partner Yoru. Procellarum's leader Shun, on the other hand, speaks seven languages in canon, though he only rarely uses them in his songs.

Eastern Animation

• Mechamato: Besides the phrase "Armored Hero, Mechamato!" in a few lines, the Malay Theme Tune has a repeated English verse at the start and end of the song which corresponds to the official English Theme Tune.
  Imagine it! (mechanise)
  Build it! (mechanise)
  Make it real!
  Mechanise, Mechamato!
• The otherwise Hindi theme song of Simple Samosa contains the English lines "Meet my sweetest friend, Dhokla!" from Samosa, and "What are you doing? Grow up, boys!" from Jalebi.

Films — Animation

• The title song in The Aristocats, sung by Maurice Chevalier in his last screen credit, starts off in English and transitions to French at the end. Chevalier also did the song for the French dub, in which it's entirely in French.
• Coco: "Un Poco Loco", "The World Es Mi Familia", and "Proud Corazón" mix Spanish and English.
• The song "Evil Eyes" from Happy Heroes 2: The Battle of Planet Qiyuan is entirely in Chinese save for the English verse "Life is rough, so you gotta be tough / Life is wonderful, so you gotta be cool".
• Lilo & Stitch has "Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride", which features lyrics both in Hawaiian and in English.
• "Circle of Life", the famous opening number from The Lion King (1994), has lyrics both in English and in Zulu.
• Moana: "We Know the Way" has lyrics in Samoan, Tokelauan, and English.
• The Prince of Egypt: The film version of "When You Believe" is in English except for the bridge, which is a condensed version of the Hebrew "Song of the Sea" from the Book of Exodus.

• In Song of the Sea, "The Song" has lyrics in both Irish and English. The verses of the film's version of "Dúlamán" are in English, but the chorus is in Irish (though the English verses were written specifically for the film, and the original folk song is entirely in Irish).
• The Three Caballeros: Several of the songs featured have lyrics in both English and Spanish. In the film itself, Panchito sings a verse of the title song in Spanish.
• Trolls World Tour: "Just Sing" has lyrics in English, Spanish and Korean.
• Wreck-It Ralph: "Sugar Rush", the theme song for the in-universe video game of the same name, contains lyrics in both Japanese and English, fitting for the game's Japanese origins.

Films — Live-Action

• Cool Cat Saves the Kids features the song "Cool Cat Loves to Rock", which features verses in both English and Spanish.
• "Deewangi Deewangi" from Om Shanti Om is mostly in Hindi, but has refrains in English.
• "Jai Ho", the closing song from Slumdog Millionaire, is mostly in Hindi, but has a verse in Spanish.
• "Husavik (My Hometown)" in Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is mostly in English but the refrain is in Icelandic.

Live-Action TV

• Season 6 of NCIS opens with Ziva singing "Temptation" in English and French.

Music

• This is a kind of Omnipresent Trope in Japanese music, since it's transversal in a lot of groups and singers (since J-Pop singers to Visual Kei bands) usually sing in Japanese with words and rhymes in English, in which also most of the song names are in English, even when the song is in fully Japanese.
• Andrew Huang Raps in Five Langauges is Exactly What It Says on the Tin; YouTube artist Andrew Huang rapping one song with lyrics in English, Spanish, French, Swedish, and Mandarin.
• "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi, featuring Daddy Yankee, was originally a completely Spanish song. The popular remix with Justin Bieber adds an English intro by Bieber and another English portion by Yankee near the end.
• "Feliz Navidad" by José Feliciano features verses in Spanish and similar verses in English.
• Many of CNCO's songs do this, where their best English-speaker will half sing, half rap a verse in English.
• The song "Echame la culpa" by Luis Fonsi and Demi Lovato takes this to the extreme, where they sing the lyrics in Spanish and then an approximate English translation, in random sequence (and it's the original).
• Freddy Fender, a Tex-Mex country singer of the 1970s, had several of these:
  • His biggest hit was his 1975 breakthrough, "Before the Next Teardrop Falls." The first verse sung in English, then repeated in Spanish. (Previous versions of this Ben Peters-penned song were in English only.)
  • His third big hit, a cover of Doris Day's "Secret Love," had the refrain sung in Spanish. This was a No. 1 country hit and top 20 pop hit in December 1975. About that same time, he also sang a verse of the old Ivory Joe Hunter R&B hit "Since I Met You Baby."
• Country singer Johnny Rodriguez had a couple of instances as well:
  • The flip side of his 1972 breakthrough hit "Pass Me By," a cover of the country standard "Jealous Heart," featured a Spanish intro.
  • In December 1975, he took "Love Put a Song In My Heart" (written by Ben Peters) to No. 1 on the country chart. The Spanish part — singing the refrain — comes after a Truck Driver's Gear Change. (In going to No. 1, this marked the only time in the history of the Billboard country chart that back-to-back No. 1 country hits featured Spanish lyrics.)
  • His 1977 hit, "Eres Tu," is one of the few wall-to-wall all-Spanish songs to make the top 40 of the Billboard country chart, peaking at No. 25.
  • In 1978, the ending to his hit "Love Me With All Of Your Heart" is the lyrics to the song from which it is based: "Cuando Calienta El Sol."
• The Clash's classic "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" has all its verses repeated in Spanish by backing vocals.
• The South African national anthem includes five languages: two lines in Xhosa, two lines in Zulu, four lines in Sesotho, four lines in Afrikaans, and ending with four lines in English.
• The intro and outro of "Montreal" by The Weeknd are spoken in French while the verses and chorus are mostly spoken in English.
• The Mars Volta often incorporate both English and Spanish lyrics into their songs. Examples include "Viscera Eyes", "Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus", and "L'Via L'Viaquez".
• The interlude to the Muse song ''I Belong to You" is spoken in French when the rest of the song is spoken in English.
• Las Ketchup's song "Asereje" plays with this trope; it's a Spanish song about a Latino guy who is trying to sing along with Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," despite knowing no English, so he fumbles it with Spanish homophones.
• A conlang version of this trope is the premise of David Seville's (aka Chipmunks') "Witch Doctor," in which the Witch Doctor's (fake) tribal-language incantation is the chorus.
• Played with by the Aquabats in their faux-prog-rock ballad "Why Rock?," in which a character called "The Alchemist" begins speaking in a strange language... in reality a backmasking of something innocuous.
• Most of Russkaja's songs are in a mix of German, Russian and occasionally English.
  • A perfect example is "Energia"; a title which happens to be "energy" in both Spanish and Russian^note Although spelled in English phonetically; In Spanish, it's "energía" and, in Russian, it's энергия (pronounced energiya), a German/English introduction^note Ending with Come on, everybody, beweg Dein Arsch! (Move your ass!!) and Russian verses.^note Initially reciting instructions for dance steps before declaring Вот мы преодолели барьер языковой! (Now we'll break the language barrier!) before switching to a block of lines in English ("Are you ready to break down the wall?!")
• The English version of Enrique Iglesias' "Bailando" is actually part-Spanish and part-English. Most of the lyrics are translated, but Spanish is sprinkled about and Gente de Zone's part is still in complete Spanish.
• The song "Aalash Kwnana" by U-Cef has an Arabic chorus but also rapping in English.
• Clotaire K's "Lubnan" has rapping in English but choruses in Levantine Arabic.
• 16 Horsepower's cover version of "The Partisan" has David Eugene Edwards singing the English translation, and guest singer Betrand Cantat singing the original French lyrics.
• Secret Chiefs 3's cover version of "La chanson de Jacky" starts in English and ends in French—because their version is a Recursive Adaptation that combines bits from Jacques Brel's original version with bits from Scott Walker's cover.
• "Michelle" by The Beatles is sung partly in English and partly in French.
• Yerba Buena's "Bilingual Girl" is all about this trope — the singer wants a girl who can speak both Spanish and English. Fittingly, the verses are in those two languages.
• Regina Spektor: "Apres Moi" is in English, but has a verse in Russian. Said verse is a shortened version of a Boris Pasternak poem.
• Pitbull: "We Are One (Ole Ola), which was written for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, features interjections in Spanish and a full verse in Portuguese.
• Shakira: "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)", the theme song of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, has a verse in Zulu.
• South African singer/comedian Robbie Wessels generally tends to be Afrikaans-only, but his song Player Twenty-Three (honouring the unsung hero of the national rugby team - its greatest fan) continually switches back and forth between Afrikaans and English.
• "Payday" by Yoon-mi Rae keeps alternating between English and Korean.
• Neo-house artist Yaeji typically mixes English and Korean in her lyrics. For example, "Raingurl" has an Enlish hook but alternates between English and Korean every other line.
• Korean-American artist Holiday Cho (aka The Black Skirts) mixes English and Korean in his music. Some songs, like "Kangaji" have an English chorus and Korean verses, and "Dientes" has the first half in English, but switches mid-sentence to Spanish in the second half.
• Cardi B's "I Like It" has a verse and the chorus by Cardi in English, and two other verses by J Balvin and Bad Bunny in Spanish.
• The lyrics to David Bowie's "It's No Game No. 1" are screamed/sung in English by Bowie, and spoken by a Japanese woman in her own native language.
• Japanese rock band, Dustz, is fronted by French-Japanese actor/singer Ray Fujita where most of their songs have a mixture of Japanese, English and French. Their cover of Dragon Ash's "Fantasista" also contains some French in it.
• Sting's "Desert Rose" is a duet with English lyrics sung by Sting himself and Arabic lyrics sung by Algerian singer Cheb Mami. Sting also has "Reste" with french rapper Gims.
• The Bayside Boys remix of "Macarena" by Los Del Rio has English verses and a Spanish chorus. The original song was solely in Spanish.
• Rick Trevino's "Just Enough Rope" had three versions, one in English, one in Spanish, and one that alternated between the two languages.
• Calexico's "The Ballad of Cable Hogue" had alternate verses sung in English by the title character, and in French by a Femme Fatale played by guest vocalist Marianne Disard.
• "Fiesta" by The Pogues has a whole verse in Spanish as well as bits of Spanish sprinkled into the English verses.
• On Pizzicato Five's US compilation album The Sound of Music, "Happy Sad" and "CDJ" are special mixes using sections from both the English and Japanese versions.
• Kareen Antonn's cover of "Total Eclipse of the Heart", titled "Si demain... (Turn Around)", and still featuring Bonnie Tyler alternates between french and english lyrics.
• Stream of Passion intersperses Spanish and English in "Reborn," "Our Cause," "Darker Days," "Monster," "Exile," and "Don't Let Go". The spoken segment of their cover of "I Have a Right" is also in Spanish.
• Pinguini Tattici Nucleari usually only sing in Italian, but "Me Want Marò Back" switches between Italian and English.
• Dark Sarah has "Hunting the Dreamer," with the verses in English and the refrain in Finnish.
• "7 Seconds" starts with Youssou N'Dour singing in West African language Wolof followed by Neneh Cherry singing in English. After the chorus (sung by both), N'Dour returns with a verse sung in French.
• Most of Adriano Celentano's "Ja tebia liubliu" is in Italian, but the chorus is in English, French, German and Russian.
• Translated cover versions of "Bella ciao" usually leave the "o bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao, ciao, ciao" line intact. For a few specific examples:
  • The Japanese version by Tiki Tiki Bamboooos keeps the "bella ciao" lines.
  • Chloé's French/Italian version. The first verse was left in Italian. The next four were translated into French, but keep the "bella ciao" lines. The final one switches from French to Italian after the first line.
• "A Mhuile nam Beann" by Allan MacDonald is a Gaelic song about the disappearance of Gaelic. It includes two English phrases, as the singer quotes someone complaining they don't understand him.
• The second line of the chorus of "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" by Ian Dury and The Blockheads changes each time, but is always in both French and German.
• Volbeat's "For Evigt" features English verses and a Danish chorus.
• Goldfinger's cover for Nena's "99 Luftballons" has verses from both the song's original German version, and the song's English translation, "99 Red Balloons".
• Emigrate’s song “Let’s Go” is sung in English for the choruses and Richard’s verse, and German for Till’s.
• "Together Again" by Sash! f/ Blå Øjne has its chorus and first verse in English, and the second verse in the singer's native Danish.
• E-Type's "Es ist nie vorbei", featuring Jasmin Wagner AKA Blümchen, has English verses and a German chorus.
• Mariya Takeuchi's "Plastic Love" is mainly in Japanese with a few Gratuitous English interjections, until the ending refrain, which is entirely in English.
• In Strict Confidence's "Morpheus", a Filk Song of the Alexander Pushkin poem of the same name, uses the group's native German for the verses, but switches to Russian for the chorus.
• "Saltwater" by Chicane f/ Máire Brennan is a mix of Irish and English.
• "A Child's Christmas in Wales" by Al Lewis, loosely based on the Dylan Thomas essay, is mostly in English, but with a section in Welsh. In the 2021 cover by Gary Barlow featuring Aled Jones, Aled naturally does that bit.
• Verso's "Spin Me Round" uses English for the first two verses and chorus, but French for the last verse.
• Infected Mushroom's "Becoming Insane" has dueting Spanish and English lyrics.
• "Amore" by Uniq(ue) is sung in Spanish, but has a rap section in English.
• Jack Savoretti's cover of "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" starts with the Italian lyrics from Pino Donaggio's original ""Io che non vivo (senza te)" before switching to the English version.
• "Báilame" by Alex Sensation feat. Yandel and Shaggy alternates between Spanish singing by the former feature and English toasting by the latter.
• "Numa Numa 2" by Dan Balan & Marley Waters, a 2018 rework of O-Zone's "Dragostea Din Tei", has verses in English and bridge passages in Spanish alongside the original Romanian chorus.
• "Ça Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand is in French, except when the girl he's singing about tells him "You are the king of the divan", and he repeats this as "I am the king of the divan".
• Sia's "1 + 1" has two bilingual versions; one with Spanish verses by Yandel and Sofia Reyes, and another with French verses by Amir.
• Mongolian rockers The Hu typically sing exclusively in their native language, but the remixes of three tracks from The Gereg - specifically "Yuve Yuve Yu", "Wolf Totem", and "Song of Women" - which fall into this category, with the original Mongolian lyrics alongside new English lyrics by the featured guest vocalists (Danny Case, Jacoby Shaddix, and Lzzy Hale respectively).
• Frontline Assembly's "Angriff" and "Attack The Masses", both from Improvised Electronic Device, alternate between English verses and German choruses.
• Billy Ray Cyrus's 25th anniversary version of "Achy Breaky Heart" combines the original English lyrics with Caballo Dorado's Spanish Translated Cover Version, "No rompas mas mi corazon".
• "Diamond Girl" by the Latin freestyle group Nice & Wild switches to Spanish for its last verse.
• Toto Cutugno's "C'est Venice" is mostly in Italian, but the first two lines of the chorus are in French. The following lines are in Italian and have a similar meaning.
• "Don't You Worry" by The Black Eyed Peas, David Guetta, and Shakira originally just had a line of Gratuitous Spanish during its prechorus, but the Farruko remix completely replaces the original English first verse with a Spanish one, while the chorus alternates between English and Spanish.
• "Bachata" by Kay One feat. Cristobal has the latter sing in Spanish and the former rap in German(with a few Gratuitous English and Gratuitous Spanish lyrics thrown in).
• In "Mafiosa" by Lartiste f/Caroliina, the former sings the verses in French while the latter sings the refrain in Portuguese.
• A number of G Idle's songs mix Korean and English lyrics in equal measure.
• Leslie Grace's cover of The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" intersperses Spanish stanzas between parts of the original English lyrics.
• Zack Knight's "Gucci" alternates between full-on Hindi and English with some Hindi interjections.
• Engelbert Humperdinck did an English/Spanish rendition of his "A Man Without Love".
• An obscure Elvis Presley number called "Wooden Heart" was sung in English and German.
• Dean Martin's rendition of "Volare" was sung in English and Italian.
• "One Night in Dubai" by Arash f/ Helena has Arabic verses and an English chorus.
• The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" has a Spanglish remix featuring Rosalía.
• Billy Idol's "Eyes Without A Face" has backing vocalist Perri Lister sing the refrain in French.

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street:
  • One verse of "Sing" is often sung in Spanish.
  • "Mando" is about a guy named Mando finding words in Spanish that rhyme with his name.
  • "Spanish Me, English Me" is about being bilingual and speaking both Spanish and English.

Theater

• The lyrics to "Wilkommen" from Cabaret have phrases that are spoken or sung in German, then repeated in French and English.
• In the Heights is about a mostly Hispanic-American community in New York City. While most songs are in English with some Spanish phrases, some songs feature entire verses in Spanish, such as "Piragua" and "Alabanza".
• One verse of "Cell Block Tango" in Chicago is in Hungarian. The character is the only "Married Murderess" who is innocent, and explains that she tried to tell the police that but they didn't understand her. The other murderesses don't understand Hungarian either and after she's finished say "Yeah ... but did you do it?"
• In Alegría, the Title Theme Tune has verses in Spanish, Italian, and English, while "Valsapena" is half Spanish, half French.

Theme Parks

• The titular anthem from It's a Small World is sung in a variety of languages throughout the ride.

Video Games

• It's implied that Off the Hook in Splatoon 2 provides an example using two fictional languages. Official lyrics to their songs have been distributed in promotional material, and the text implies that Pearl raps in the typical Inkling language while Marina sings her parts in Octarian (shown by her singing in katakana instead of hiragana).
• The ending theme of Journey (2012), "I Was Born For This", has verses in Latin, Old English, Classical Greek, French, and Japanese, in that order.
• "Weight of the World", the Ending Theme for NieR: Automata, has three separate versions: one sung in English, one in Japanese, and one in Chaotic.^note A constructed language meant to sound like modern-day languages after a few thousand years of linguistic drift. During Ending E, the vocal track alternates between all three versions.
• Many songs from the EXA_PICO series are sung in both Japanese and one or more of the series' Conlangs. Certain songs may have as many as four languages being used at various points.
• "Liberi Fatali", the opening song of Final Fantasy VIII is sung mostly in Latin, but opens and ends with the chant "Fithos lusec wecos vinosec", an anagram of English words.
• "Soul Phrase", the opening theme of Persona 3 Portable, has lyrics that alternate between English and Japanese.

Western Animation

• The Betty Boop short "A Language All My Own" has Betty singing title song in English and Japanese.

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