Headline : Sex, Mozart and chanting monks … the 20 best Euro-pop UK hits – ranked!

Read more from the original article on here at www.theguardian.com.

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As Nena’s 99 Red Balloons turns 40, we look back at the best continental foreign-language songs that achieved cross-Channel success

Shuffling French Euro-disco with vocals in Spanish and a melody line worthy of a John Barry spy thriller theme, El Bimbo might be the apotheosis of the 70s “holiday hit”, brought back from the continent as a souvenir like the musical equivalent of a straw donkey. Still, far better than 1974’s other big holiday hit, Y Viva España.

It wobbles unsteadily along the line that separates catchy from infuriating, but Dragostea Din Tei remains the UK’s only ever hit in Romanian. It was perhaps best the lyrics stayed that way: a translation into English reveals they’re either nonsense, or – according to one imaginative online interpretation – about ejaculation.

Non-English-language Eurovision winners were seldom UK hits, but you can see why the public made an exception for Un Banc, un Arbre, une Rue: it sounded like a Francophone take on the kind of British bubblegum pop made by White Plains, Butterscotch and the original Brotherhood of Man that was huge in the charts around 1970-71.

Read more from the original article on here at www.theguardian.com.

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