Exploring its appeal, even when in foreign language to the listeners
The love of music has seemingly extended past cultural barriers for many young music listeners globally in recent years, and this connection has seemed to transcend language as well, at least among young US listeners.
According to Luminate’s midyear trends chart for 2023, 40% of US listeners engage with non-English music with the top 5 languages besides English being Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, and Italian.
This has helped propel the work of artists who sing primarily in foreign languages such as South Korea’s BTS and Blackpink, and Latin and Spanish music artists such as Bad Bunny and Rosalía to a more global audience.
The On-Demand Audio streaming of Latin music, for instance (which is mostly sung in Spanish) stands at a whopping 57.9B streams just from the first 34 weeks of this year. This is a 10.5B increase compared to 47.4B streams from the same time period last year. As of now, Latin music is the 5th largest major genre overall, in the US.
With K-pop, according to a Statista survey done last year, it is the musical catchiness in terms of rhythm and chorus of K-pop songs, that draws international listeners in, followed by style, and the novelty of the music genre in different countries. A case in point is BTS’s Jungkook, whose recent single ‘Seven’ (as a solo artist) enjoyed the fastest rise to a billion streams in Spotify history, besting Miley Cyrus’ song ‘Flowers’ which previously held the record.
On October 30, Jung Kook's "Seven (feat. Latto)" became the fastest song to reach 1 Billion streams in Spotify history. pic.twitter.com/F0FgNPc1zr
— Spotify (@Spotify) October 30, 2023
This enthusiasm for foreign language music does not seem to translate as broadly on the UK side of the pond. According to a Guardian article, there seems to be multiple reasons for this hesitant reception to foreign language music in the UK, that even goes past having to dissect and understand a new language. Nonetheless, there are individual UK fans who are ready to go through that extra effort to relate more to the music of their favourite foreign artists.
There was a notable exception to this ‘trend’, in the international success of the 2017 Latin summer hit ‘Despacito’.
‘Despacito’ became one of the most watched YouTube videos of all time with over 2.5 billion views, and the UK’s longest running No.1 foreign language song in UK charting history.
Interestingly, though, all this is against the simultaneous rise of Afrobeats, a now massively popular genre in both the UK and US. Afrobeats are often a mix of English, pidgin, and the specific language of the African artist depending on their background. The genre has its foundations in London, as well as Nigeria and Ghana specifically.
With the genre being promoted by African artists like Yemi Alade, Tiwa Savage, Burna Boy, and Wizkid, and propelled by music streaming, and high-profile music collaborations, it seems that there is music that can be enjoyed even in the UK that is culturally and linguistically ‘different’.