"foreign songs" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use this phrase to refer to songs that come from outside your own culture or region. For example, "I love listening to foreign songs to learn about different cultures."
Other countries despise the U.K. for this heresy, and believe that it is yet another instance of British xenophobia at its most insolent and thuggish, but what arouses British mirth is not funny foreigners but funny foreign songs, as well as the grave respect in which they are held by the foreigners, who become funny as a result.
Maoist revolutionary music was the acceptable genre and foreign songs were prohibited (with the exception of Soviet songs).
In the early days, bands were not allowed to play foreign songs or jaunty music that could encourage dancing.
And even now the beat-down goes on: Last year the Beijing censors blacklisted 100 foreign songs, ordering their removal from all music Web sites in China.
Other endeavours since then have included recording cover versions of foreign songs in phonetic English and curating a DJ mix comprised solely of field recordings.
A Bronx-born songwriter who studied under Frank Loesser, the celebrated composer of "Guys and Dolls," Mr. Gimbel co-wrote a pair of Broadway musicals and several 1950s pop hits, including the Andy Williams single "Canadian Sunset," before adapting foreign songs for English-language listeners.
They staged foreign song contests, public speaking competitions and free tuition.
And Bob Dylan deliberately mangled it in "Talkin' Hava Negeilah Blues" after introducing the tune as "a foreign song I learned in Utah".
In April of 1980, when Bob Marley arrived to headline the independence celebrations that would see Rhodesia become Zimbabwe, his song "Zimbabwe," the centerpiece of the "Survival" album, was the most popular foreign song in the country.
Galápagos finches learn their songs from their fathers, and females avoid mating with males singing a "foreign" song; when finches colonize a new location, a variant song may develop and inhibit mating with the ancestral population (p. 53).
However, of the five observed cases, four females came near the loudspeaker during the playback of local songs and only one female approached while a foreign song was broadcast.
