12.05.2020
HEAR IGGY POP’S FRENCH LANGUAGE RENDITION OF ELVIS COSTELLO’S ‘NO FLAG’
Rolling Stone: Andy Greene: December 3rd 2020
When Elvis Costello’s new album Hey Clockface dropped in late October, nobody noticed the sly Iggy and the Stooges reference in the song “No Flag.”
“[The title] should have been a clue right away,” Costello tells Iggy Pop in a new Rolling Stone Musicians on Musicians discussion “It shared one word and one letter with a famous song of yours [‘No Fun’], but nobody spotted where it was drawing from because nobody expects me to take a cue from you.”
That cue is impossible to ignore now that Pop has recorded a French language rendition of “No Flag.” The video for the song features hand-drawn animation by frequent collaborators Arlo McFurlow and Eamon Singer.
“[This song] was quite an effort,” says Pop, whose 2012 LP Après featured many French-language songs. “Nobody official asked for it. It was just Elvis and [his wife] Diana [Krall] asking, ‘Do you want to sing this in French?’ And I thought, ‘Well, the French will be a big chore. I can do that.’”