Ranking genres of music by usefulness for language learners 

I agree with all of that except for rap: in a lot of countries rap lyrics tend to be more about philosophy with sophisticated metaphores and sometimes require a lot of background knowledge to understand them. Though it is very beneficial for advanced learners, but, IMO, they are an absolute no-go for beginners, who will spend too much time deconstructing the meaning of one single line. Moreover, where on this list do jazz, blues and a capella singing belong?

Very nice idea ! Personally I would rank trad music higher because the sentences are often simpler AND are repeated a lot in the chorus, and while I agree that the vocab can be dialectal or simply too ancient to be use on a daily basis, this exact fact is also guaranteeing that this music is part of the studied language core history and thus helps language learners with apprehending the target language's culture.

This is a great ranking, but i would add childrens musik alongside rap in the highest category. Everything is well annancuated, repeated numerous times and often accompanied by mimic movements, wich is excellent for beginners. It obviously does not help an intermediate or advanced learner, but that does not change how effective it is al teaching beginners. It is made for children, who essentially are beginners too.

For Swedish, i would say that what you call traditional music probably would refer to Dansband (Swedish traditional "country" music to dance to) and Visor. Visor i would say is probably really good for learning as they tend to focus on lyrics and telling a story. They also sometimes can be a bit comical which is fun. A good example would be Cornelius Vreeswijk - Brev från kolonien. Also the language isn't that dialectal either imho.

Exception for Rock: Rammstein! They even teach people how pronounce the name in early songs haha

For Serbian, I think traditional classic rock music (ex-yu rock) and folk music are the best genres if you wanna learn something There's also a lot of great modern rap songs but they can be a little confusing if you don't know any slang or culture of Serbia

I thought I was the only one who learned German like that. Special thanks to Sido who was the first one to make me feel the language was no worse for learners than others

I'd say pop rock is easier to understand than hard rock. I understand you didn't want to split it, but rock is such a wide genre than it's hard to place it like this. Rap is another one that is very varied; the rap I've heard is quite fast, and some songs have a heavy emphasis on the beat. I'd argue pop music is easier than rap. I'll agree that theatrical music is the easiest overall.

Venezuela's (and Latam's) version of Traditional I'd say is Cumbia, Vallenato, Salsa, and Joropo (last one is Venezuela-specific), while Pop's equivalent is probably Reggaeton.

Interesting video!

Disney+ has been really helpful for comprehensible input, but the subtitles don't match the audio. To me, the best music is whatever you like and will want to listen to. Get a good song stuck in your head and just let your brain digest all those words

Now, just a thing... Classical music is totally not only instrumental. There are many chorales, operas, oratoriums etc, so you could technically get something out of it! The only problem is that probably some of the vocabulary isn't relevant anymore

I have learned a lot of German by listening to classical opera and Lieder music, by the angelic voice of Diana Damrau, and I look up the lyrics, if I don't understand them already because she actually enunciates well.

Rap is for sure the best one to me even if you cant understand the background . The Culture will teach you .

I was about to say I don't agree yet I remembered rap actually helped me. I'd say music isn't my favorite tool to learning languages but it's also true it depends on your favorite genres. I still think However, just because of how different it is from real speech it shouldn't be your main activity. Totally agree on the tier list though.

It's always a good morning when you wake up to a Watch Your Language upload. However, I would like to provide a contrasting perspective. Personally, I don't see a use for the term "music" if the sole focus of the song is on the lyrics. More precisely, the utterance of the words is most often, perhaps an exception for those who only listen to rap, adherent to the flow of the melody in some way. This leads to lyrics being pronounced poorly, even if the sounds are right. As an example that does not pertain to music, every once in a blue moon I get confused listening to British English because the stress accent is opposite to what I'd expect. The same can happen in music when it matches the melody of the song. As you mentioned, a significant portion of music falls victim to inaudible pronunciation, so it's more accurate to blatantly say that this music is more of a waste of time than some others. Note, as well, that a lot of music is high energy, so a lot of lyrics are hard to hear perfectly, or pass by so quickly that a learner loses the lyric if they didn't understand the meaning. All of this is to say that the majority of learning from music is done through reading and translating the written lyrics, and THEN listening for them in the song. Sure, you may enjoy singing along to the music and this definitely may improve your pronunciation, but the bulk of your learning is making the lyrics comprehensible. At this point, you might get more value out of reading along to anything which has audible narration, as natural speech is more important to understand than strangely pronounced lyrics which natives might tell you don't even make sense. Music is fun, and it makes the learning feel extra easy. But it's realistically inefficient and most of its treasures (new words, increased comprehension, improved pronunciation, etc...) can be achieved using other resources of interest to the learner. Music is better to utilize when you don't have motivation to do more intense learning, and just want to be lazy. Music is better than nothing.

Not all classical music is instrumental though, German Lieder have been pretty helpful for me

Definitely a big agree on rap. I'm studying Cantonese right now, which is a disglossia. Which means that the typical Cantopop sounds you hear use standard Chinese, which is never how people speak in everyday life. Rap completely avoids this and uses vernacular Cantonese. I'm sure you've also encountered Idahosa Ness & his Mimic Method? He uses songs & rap to help language learning. Lastly, please make a playlist for language learning tipcs.

My English wouldn't have been as good as it is now, if I hadn't grown up listening to rap music and fallen in love with it. Nowadays I still listen to rap music in any new language that I try to learn and even in a few languages that I haven't yet thought about learning. I have always learned to speak my languages in a more colloquial way. I don't like textbook-ese, therefore I pick up colloquial/informal/slangy expressions very early on when learning a language and rap is perfect for that. Also the part about pop culture is so spot on. I have learned more about American pop culture from references in Eminem's songs than from any other source. It's truly an incredible genre for language.

I slightly disagree with classical music. There are classical music with lyrics, (mostly in German or French tho) and I actually learned a bit of German from it.

Spotify global charts are the best. It can somewhat help you learn different dialects as well (depends on the language obviously, works well with Spanish).

Great video as always! I wouldn't underestimate the utility of music when it comes to learning grammar, either. Regardless of whether you understand every or not, morphological endings, appropriate prepositions, relative clause word order, aspect, mood... all that can be hammered into your brain with a catchy chorus. Here in Eastern Europe folk songs, though beautiful vessels of our culture, are always dialectal and practically useless in terms of vocabulary, folk derivatives are intellectually unbearable (maybe not to you, but certainly for a good deal of native speakers), rap lyrics are also not something you want to be heard saying and so what you're left with is pop and rock. I remember learning the Polish locative case for a test through a single pop song - W kinie, w Lublinie (suprisingly it covers all or most of the sound changes, though not the plural).

If we value relatively complex and clearly enunciated lyrics the most, then most instances of sung poetry (Leonard Cohen, Edithe Piaf, Bulat Okudzhava, etc) should rank rather close to most rap or hip hop I think the usefulness of a music genre for language learning also depends on your proficiency in a given language. Listening to songs in a foreign language isn't really about focused intensive learning, but rather about reinforcing the elements of a language that you already know. For beginners, familiarity, repetition, and simplicity are a virtue, not a flaw. Even poorly enunciated but lyrically simple reggaeton might be easier to understand than Disney's Encanto (Pressure is difficult to understand even in one's native language) or Hunchback of Notre Dame in Spanish , for example

Folk punk/Folk rock has always been my genre of choice for music more "about the lyrics". To me as a kid, Rap represented a constant sting of fast incomprehensible slurs. And as an adult. Most rap songs are still mostly that. Sure. The lyrics mean something. But whether it's about cleverly insulting somebody, drugs, sex, etc. Very little of the rap I hear other people play is within my taste. I just never personally understood the appeal. Where as Folk Punk's lyrics were usually meant to be deep, tell a story, state an opinion, etc. While the music was pleasant. It's usually nothing extremely complex. You can usually play along with a ukulele. Haven't heard many folk punk songs in the languages I'm learning. I should search for some. I'm focusing on Indonesian currently. There's a few decent pop songs but Indonesia is far from being a cultural powerhouse.

A genre of music that pretty much all countries have that is AMAZING is Trova, or whichever equivalent is in your country

With pop music stick to pre 2000s pop music since modern pop has gibberish lyrics or really basic lyrics. old school pop has more interesting clear lyrics. same with rap old school rap is more understandable and clear .but now rap is hard to understand and has strange vocabulary. most countries have music that i like only India Albania and middle eastern countries don't have much that i like. it seems like they skipped my favourite era in music (late 20th century) modern music from there has the same issues as western music. like auto tune and repetitive lyrics. but their music from the 80s 70s 60s sounds all pure traditional and much older than it actually is. and while i prefer that to modern music i would rather listen to 70s style music. and before you say its a poverty issue i liked a lot of music from countries. like dr Congo Laos even north Korea.

I agree with most everything but EDM I do disagree on. While not all songs have the lyrics. Those that do tend to sound distorted from the original recording and can actually help you improve your ability to pick out words in different accents of a language. That being said it’s not super useful as the same phrase may get repeated many times making the song language light. There are some genres like hardbass that add more complex lyrics but in your framework it’s overall fine say for this one point

Nursery rhymes

Certain kinds of metal like black metal and death metal also fall into the category of incomprehensible music.

the best gender for learning another language is *drumroll* canadian tire well okay then

Without watching the video, Id say instrumental (obviously) and less clear music (death metal and stuff) would be at the bottom with pop (catchy, easy, repeated versed) and "romantic" (slow and good vocabulary) would be at the top

Rap is too fast for a learner to learn a language, and it uses street language, which does not cover many topics..... I would put something like (reading Poetry) on top, or whatever genre you enjoy because you'd actually listen to it that way.

The best genre of music is: ***drumroll*** Russian Military Parade Music

Nah man, I cannot understand even my native languages' pop music, how is that better than trad? at least folk music tends to be actually comprehensible and not autotuned to oblivion.

Wow! Your ignorance of classical music is breathtaking! Sure, a lot of classical music is instrumental--but a lot of it isn't. How about opera? How about religious music?

Can't agree with rap being no.1, I can't even understand rap full well in my mother tongue, often time the singer just mumbling. And there's a lot of swear words.