How do you write a featuring artist into a song title

Question

In English there is a convention where you can include featured artists of a song in the song's title using the format:

[Song Title] feat. [Featured Artist]

What is the equivalent of this in Russian?

UPDATE: As pointed out in this answer, I intended to reference the format:

[Artist] - [Song Title] feat. [Featured Artist]

I just want to point out that Wikipedia has a paragraph on how "feat" is usually translated (if it's translated). — undercat, May 25 '18 at 13:06

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered May 25 '18 at 10:46

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You know, I've never seen such a use case. I always thought that "feat." meant "a duet", that is one artist does something with another. A quick search gave some examples like "Yelawolf - Best Friend ft. Eminem", that is [Artist] - [Song Title] feat. [Featured Artist], that is not like you said [Song Title] feat. [Featured Artist]

In that case I would say there is no established way to convey this. Basically, you need to express that there are more than one person present in that situation (sing a song in that case). So you can use whatever means you have in the language to do this (I listed them from most preferable one to the least) (the list is not exhaustive):

use the conjunction "и" (it means "and"), that is Филлип Киркоров и Красная Плесень — Зайка моя [Artist] "и" [Artist] — [Song].
use some symbols like &, / etc. Филлип Киркоров & Красная Плесень — Зайка моя [Artist] & [Artist] — [Song]
use the word "дует" (a duet) like Филлип Киркоров, дуэт с Красной Плесенью — Зайка моя [Artist] "дуэт с" [Artist] — [Song]

answered May 25 '18 at 10:46

d.k

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I'm no expert, but [Artist] и/& [Artist] sounds more like if they wrote the song together rather than if Artist1 invited Artist2 to sing a song together. Option with "дуэт" sounds more suitable, however I wouldn't use it for bands, only for individual singers. – Alissa May 25 '18 at 11:16
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@Alissa, oh, you are from Russia, then this is strange, I thought you are not a native speaker. Then this must be some regional differences. But from my experience as a native speaker, the [artist] part always means a person, who sings the song, not an author. I don't think there is a formally defined rule for that, but at least this is a convention. I've never seen when an author put at this place. Consider this https://www.rusradio.ua/playlist/ , as far as I can image ВИА ГРА never composes neither music, nor lyrics, but they are placed as the [Artist] part. And so on – d.k May 25 '18 at 11:48
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in English this is the same. Sometimes an artist happens to be the author, but this is rather an exception. For instance, Ricky Martin - Livin' La Vida Loca. Ricky Martin is neither the composer, nor a poet in that case. I don't have time right now to gather comprehensive data on this, but my intuition says, that I would be right on this claim – d.k May 25 '18 at 11:52
Never thought of the fact that some bands don't write their songs... I guess you are right and there is no difference. It just feels that way to me. – Alissa May 29 '18 at 12:53

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 25 '18 at 12:51

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I would use the English word unless you know that your target audience does not know what "feat" means (e. g. if these are very old people).

Justification: I searched for "feat" on Yandex.Music. I found several Russian-speaking artists, who use "feat" in their song titles.

Some examples:

Yandex is targeted at ordinary people. If they use "feat", it's probably widespread enough in Russia (at least among Yandex users).

answered May 25 '18 at 12:51

Glory to Russia

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If you change the interface from English to Russian, "feat" will be replaced with a simple comma. That said, I've certainly seen some Russian speaking singers use the word, primarily those drawing inspiration from popular "Western" music. – undercat May 25 '18 at 13:16

Баян Купи-ка · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-25T17:07:54.813

The Russian equivalents are

при участии+ name of an artist (prevalent)

OR

c участием+ name of an artist

abbreviated forms при уч. and c уч.

Both literally mean with the participation of

Since features are common in contemporary music genres like hip hop and dance music the above mentioned convention i believe was developed within the Russian hip hop scene, as dance genres scene is underdeveloped in Russia so far as i'm aware. But the convention seems to have been adopted across the spectrum.

A few examples of the usage: 1, 2, 3

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 25 '18 at 21:46

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We put equivalent from English for example, Pussycat Dolls feat. Timbaland Russian names and bands also with the word "feat."

answered May 25 '18 at 21:46

Anastasia Arestova

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Alex_ander · Answer 5 · 2018-05-25T13:36:17.877

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I think, in the context of mentioning a/the/main performing artist (rather than introducing an additional guest performer - in that case: при участии/c участием) feat. (featuring) can be replaced with the Russian исп. (stands for исполняет).

An example from an author's site:

Старый рояль муз. И. Филатова, стихи С. Пискунова, исп. С. Пискунов

http://www.piskunov-sergey.ru/muzyka/

edited May 25 '18 at 13:36

answered May 25 '18 at 13:30

Alex_ander

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have you ever seen *featuring* being used to refer to the main performer? – Баян Купи-ка May 25 '18 at 13:40
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Sure. An example: some setlist for a rock opera performed by a number of artists, with each number in the list provided with only vocal performers' names (or mentioning the most famous one; e. g. King Herod's Song /feat. Alice Cooper/). – Alex_ander May 25 '18 at 13:50
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The link with my example (Ft.): https://genius.com/albums/Original-television-cast-of-jesus-christ-superstar/Jesus-christ-superstar-live-in-concert-original-soundtrack-of-the-nbc-television-event – Alex_ander May 25 '18 at 13:54

How do you write a featuring artist into a song title

5 Answers5