Why I Stopped Listening To Music In English — And You Should Too

I love listening to Taylor Swift, Bon Iver, and Tame Impala as much as the next person. For years, I listened to every single one of their songs every chance I got. Yes, that includes Taylor Swift’s unreleased “Dark Blue Tennessee”. While English is important, there’s more to life than just English books, music, news, and the English language itself. I am a native English speaker and in 2020, I completely stopped listening to music in English. The only time I find myself listening to English music is when I’m in the car and the radio is on, or if music is playing over an intercom in a store, typically at an outlet or mall. For me, English has seemingly gotten — well — boring. But that’s not a sole reason to just drop your favorite artists like they’re a bag of hot potatoes.

English is used all over the world. Every day, we are left with no choice. We are consumed with the English language. We’re either speaking, reading, texting, or listening to the language at any given point of the day. According to a 2021 study by Statista, English was the number one most spoken language worldwide with a total of 1.35 billion speakers who are either native speakers or speak English as a second language. Mandarin Chinese came in a close second with 1.12 billion speakers worldwide.