
Musicians and their fans routinely speak of music as a universal language, and they’re not entirely wrong. Melodies and rhythms really do float over the barriers of spoken language that separate the human race. Like the air through which it moves, music can feel like a natural resource too abundant to be contained.
People can’t live without it, and wherever you go, it’s already there.That being said, people are more dependent on verbal language than they think. Tunes are feelings, but more often than not, it’s the words attached to them that give those emotions form and direction. Music and language are communal activities, and to not speak a song’s language is to be excluded, in some measure, from the people it represents. The more powerful and numerous the speakers of a language, the more likely a song in that language is to succeed, particularly when the music business is involved. English-speaking pop artists routinely top charts in non-English-speaking countries; meanwhile the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 contains only four non-English songs. Music may be universal, but its universe is unevenly structured.
It takes superhuman magnetism and songcraft for a non-English song to rise anywhere near the upper reaches of the American charts: Korean artist PSY’s “Gangnam Style,” with its absurdly catchy synth riff, dance, and music video, charted at No. 2, but most recently it’s “Despacito,” the cool-and-hot romantic ballad from Puerto Rican artists Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee that’s made a tremendous impact, holding the top spot for a record-matching 16 weeks. Yet even with such a colossal success, coverage of “Despacito” has been spotty compared to an English-language…
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