For a long time, English has held sway over the music world. But this trend is being reversed by streaming platforms, which enable music lovers the world over to discover content in other languages.
Two researchers recently looked into this phenomenon in an academic paper published by the London School of Economics and Political Science.
They analysed the 2022 music charts of 10 European countries – the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Ireland, and Portugal – taking into account the nationalities of the artistes and the languages in which they sing.
Local languages appear to be making a strong comeback in the musical output of the countries studied, particularly Italian. Indeed, 70% of the top 10 most popular songs in the country last year were sung in Italian – a substantial increase from the 30% recorded in 2012 and 2017.
This turnaround can be explained, in part, by the success of local artistes like Rhove, whose single “Shakerando” has gone viral on TikTok.
The Chinese social network, which has established itself as a career and hit accelerator in the music industry, has also encouraged Brits to take a closer look at the output of their homegrown artists, whether recent or much older.
While seven of the 10 most popular songs in the UK in 2022 come straight from there, most are at least three years old and have come back into fashion thanks to social networks, according to the study’s findings.
Poland, Sweden and France are also among the territories where the use of local languages in music is more widespread and popular than ever.
The figures speak for themselves: 70% of the most popular songs in Poland last year were sung in Polish, compared with 10% in 2012; while 90% of the most listened-to songs in Spain over the same period were sung in Spanish.
But in the case of the Iberian country, this statistic hides another reality: the most popular Spanish-speaking musicians often come not from Spain but from Latin America, as demonstrated by the success of Bad Bunny, the most-listened-to male artiste on Spotify for three years running.
Although some European countries – the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and Portugal – are less affected than others by this craze for local languages in popular music, national productions are shining brighter than ever outside their borders, as the researchers outline.
They quote Adam Granit from the Universal Music Group, who said: “If you look at the top 10 artistes in the world in 2022, they are from seven different countries.” This is much to the chagrin of English-speaking musicians.
“If local European markets are benefiting from ‘glocalisation’, spare a thought for English-speaking markets who traditionally had a comparative advantage in music-exports, as they are now struggling to get their English-language repertoire heard overseas,” explain Will Page and Chris Dalla Riva in their study.
But this rise of local languages on the international music scene does not benefit all non-English-speaking musicians. Indeed, it raises questions about the promotion of musical diversity and the efficiency of the distribution of artistes’ creations to all corners of the world.