Some months ago, I downloaded a new track by Avril Lavigne called Girlfriend. On the first listen, it was one of those pop songs made with pure cheese, that is immediately catchy and you want to hear it again and again. At the same time, the radio stations were playing the Lavigne’s single, Keep Holding On, which I thought was a horrible and bland song, and I wondered why they didn’t release Girlfriend as a single.

The radio stations started playing Girlfriend this past week, over and over; thus granting my wish to hear it again and again. I think this would have been a great summer song, and maybe the marketers staged the recent good weather to coincide with the song’s release. Unfortunately for the song however, it is incredibly shallow and after listening to it a couple of times, it has started to get annoying. It’s one of those songs that sound great, and everything just goes downhill from there.

Lavigne’s label looks to be banking on this catchy pop tune because she has recorded 8 different versions of the song, English + 7 other languages. I found the Mandarin version of Girlfriend and it is lame. First, the Mandarin sections sound like someone else is singing it and only certain sections of the chorus are in Mandarin — all the verses are still in English. I would expect a localized version of a song to have the majority of the song in the native language, not just the easy bits. But I guess that is too much to ask of the lyricists.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: chinese, music, popculture