For the first time ever, the No 1 album in America features lyrics sung mostly in Korean. Love Yourself: Tear by K-pop group BTS has been in a fierce chart battle with Post Malone this week, but has managed to clinch the No 1 spot, outperforming industry predictions.
The record’s success comes at a time of huge opportunity in the US music industry for acts that don’t perform in English.
In the 16 years between the summer of the Macarena in 1996 and the viral success of Psy’s Gangnam Style in 2012, there wasn’t a single song performed in a language other than English to hit the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.
In the past three years though, the proportion of non-English tracks on Billboard has been increasing. This has, in large part, been down to the success of reggaeton artists and, in particular, Despacito, the Daddy Yankee and Luis Fonsi hit that had a 16-week record-breaking reign at No 1 last summer. Despacito opened the door for other latin tracks. In 2016, the year before its release, there were just four Spanish-language tracks in the top 100 all year. In 2017, there were 19.
The number is almost certainly set to rise this year. This week’s Billboard 100 features six non-English songs including Fake Love by BTS – sung in Korean – and Te Bote, Dura, X and Dame Tu Cosita – reggaeton tracks all performed in Spanish.
After the success of Despacito, Luis Fonsi had said he was sent videos from all over the world of “people trying to nail the Spanish, trying to learn a bit of Spanish through the song”. Spanish has long been the most commonly learned language in the US, but the influence of K-pop is being felt in the languages young Americans are learning. Between 2013 and 2016, as K-pop grew dramatically in popularity in America, US college enrolments in Korean classes went up 65%, even as overall enrolments in foreign language courses dropped off.
Priscilla Kim is the director of the Korean Cultural Center in New York, which offers language courses. She says that, among younger students, K-pop has become a driving factor to learn the language. “Over the years we have definitely witnessed growing popularity of K-pop among younger students. As a Korean language and cultural institution located in the heart of K-town, we have courses in the summer that are tailored toward K-pop fans who are interested in learning Korean through K-pop lyrics.”
The language app Duolingo launched a Korean course in September 2017 and it currently has 2.78 million total learners. On message boards on the site, users have talked about being inspired by K-pop acts as well as Korean TV to learn Korean, and the app has included some lessons that are based around K-pop.
The vast majority of songs and albums streamed in the US are still performed in English, but the rapid chart surge for non-English music in the past few years suggests this may just be the beginning.
At a time where some Americans are concerned that speaking other languages in public puts themselves in danger, pop music feels like a progressive antidote, with the importance of what language a song is performed in second to the music itself.
