Iggy Pop features on French language version of Elvis Costello's "No Flag"

Costello's Hey Clockface album landed in October, and today (4 December) he's returned with a new version of one of the album tracks "No Flag", which features Iggy Pop singing in French.

Speaking to Iggy Pop for Rolling Stone about "No Flag", Costello said, "[The title] should have been a clue right away. 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."

Iggy Pop added, "[This song] was quite an effort. 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'."

Explaining the hard work that went into learning the song in French, Iggy Pop said, "There’s a uniqueness to the French language. 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."

"No Flag" was originally released in June as a first taster of Costello's latest LP. Although Iggy Pop and Costello have been friends for decades, the French rendition of "No Flag" marks their first collaboration.