Iggy Pop has shared a French language rendition of Elvis Costello‘s ‘No Flag’, a song from his most recent studio album Hey Clockface that includes a reference to Iggy and the Stooges. Check out ‘No Flag (en Français)’ below.
Iggy Pop talked about reworking the song in a Rolling Stone conversation between the two artists: “There’s a uniqueness to the French language,” he said. “No other language has vowels that sound like that. Learning a song that’s as quick as ‘No Flag’ took a month of practice because my lips weren’t used to those combinations…I [worked on it] for 40 minutes a day for about five weeks. You don’t want to do too much work on it at once or it’s not fun anymore.”
Costello responded: “You sound absolutely convincing in French. When I played your version to Muriel she said, ‘This is unbelievable. You’re so inside the song.’ Diana and I were both listening to it with tears in our eyes.”
Hey Clockface, Costello’s 31st studio album, came out in October. Iggy Pop’s most recent LP was last year’s Free.