Pop Music's Bias Towards English is Diminishing

English language music is losing its stranglehold on the charts, according to new data from music streaming giant Spotify. 

The company say songs in 16 different languages, including Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Turkish, Indonesian and Arabic, appeared in their Global Top 50 last year. That's more than double the figure from 2020. 

Bad Bunny, who sings exclusively in Spanish, was the most-streamed artist in the world. And Brit Award winner Rosalía sings in 14 dialects on her latest album, Lux. 

Spotify said Brazilian Funk was the fastest-growing genre in the world, with audiences up by 36%. K-Pop saw a 31% increase, and Trap Latino was up by 29%. 

All of those genres earned more than $100m in royalties from Spotify last year, the company said. English still dominates the charts, with 14 of last year's Top 20 best-selling albums sung exclusively in the language, according to the music industry body the IFPI. 

But South Korean bands such as Stray Kids, Enhypen and Seventeen all featured in the list, as did Japanese rock group Mrs Green Apple, as fans increasingly explore music outside the typical paradigms of rock and pop. 

According to a 2021 analysis of listening behaviour published in the journal Nature, this trend has been accelerating since 2017. Not coincidentally, that's the same year that streaming overtook CDs and vinyl as the music industry's biggest source of income.

Last week, Spotify's most-played chart included songs from Bad Bunny and Rauw Alejandro (Puerto Rico), Nadhif Basalamah (Indonesia), Tyla (South Africa), Tems (Nigeria), Ryan Castro (Colombia), El Bogueto, Peso Pluma, Neton Vega and Fuerza Regida (Mexico), Blackpink, Jung Kook and Jin (South Korea). 

Spotify's data was revealed as they announced their annual Loud And Clear report, which breaks down the global streaming economy. The streaming giant said they had paid $11bn in royalties to the music industry last year, up from $10bn in 2024. The figure makes it the highest-paying retailer globally, the company claimed. 

It is worth noting, however, that royalties distributed by Spotify don't necessarily go directly to musicians, with record labels, distributors, publishers, managers and songwriters often taking a cut.

At the Squash Australian Open semi-final yesterday, Sivasangari Subramaniam got the better of world No. 12 Nele Gilis, beating her 3-0: 11-8, 13-11, 11-4. 

And Malaysia's world No. 6 is just one match away from ending a 13-month title drought after storming into the final! 

North Koreans' Reaction to K-pop

I chanced upon this video on the Boing Boing website – it spotlights North Koreans’ reactions to seeing a K-Pop show for the first time in their lives. 

I read that they liked it, like really liked it – but their excited expressions are apparently everyone else's flatlining in a coma expression! 

And I gave a ha-ha. Sorry, I was not laughing at them; it is a personal joke, that's all!

 

Okay, I'll let you in on it. It reminds me of my own seemingly blank expression at stand-up comedy performances. Most of the time anyway.

The said gig happened in April 2018, and was covered by CNN.

Contribute Money for a Good Cause

It’s good that for those Americans who’re not out on the streets to protest for #GeorgeFloyd are contributing in some other meaningful way to the #BlackLivesMatter cause. 

One of which is to lighten their pockets. 

And so, some US celebrities have announced big donations out of solidarity with the nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, in particular to post bond for demonstrators who have been arrested. 

The latest to do so is the cast of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a comedy TV series set at a police station in New York, which said it is donating $100,000 to the National Bail Fund Network. 

“The cast and showrunner of Brooklyn 99 condemn the murder of George Floyd and support the many people who are protesting police brutality nationally”, they said in a brief statement tweeted by the actress Stephanie Beatriz, who plays the irascible but good-hearted cop Rosa Diaz in the series.

The showbiz couple made up of Blake Lively (Gossip Girl) and Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) said they are giving $200,000 to the legal defence fund of the NAACP, America’s largest civil rights organisation. 

Model and TV presenter Chrissy Teigen, a regular user of Twitter to criticize President Donald Trump, is also putting up money in solidarity with the protesters. 

Teigen (left) first announced she was donating $100,000 to pay demonstrators’ bail. Then, after somebody on the internet accused her of supporting “rioters and criminals”, she went further. 

“Ooo they might need more money then. Make it $200,000”, Teigen wrote. 

Even K-pop stars (Rapper Jay Park, GOT 7's Mark, DAY6's Jae, and rapper pH-1 among others) have donated to the Black Lives Matter movement, George Floyd Memorial Fund or Minnesota Freedom Fund, which provide bail for arrested protesters. 

With approvals in place, Liverpool could end their 30-year Premier League title drought at home after all. 

The Reds, who are two wins from being crowned champions, play at Everton on June 21 and their game against Crystal Palace on June 24 – the potential title-clincher – is scheduled to be held at Anfield.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed the two matches are on.

Becoming Prettier: Before and After

Image credit: http://nextshark.com/k-pop-group-spends-88000-plastic-surgery-promote-new-music-videos/

One K-pop girl group decided to show the "before" and "after" results of their cosmetic surgery through two music videos.

In the aptly named first video titled "Becoming Prettier (Before)", all four members of Korean group Six Bomb are seen receiving plastic surgery consultation.

The video was first released in February 2017.

The follow up video, named – you guessed it – "Becoming Prettier (After)," which shows the girls walking out of the hospital with their post-surgery results, was released a month later in March.

In the video, they dance in an operating theatre, as the surgery lights pulse in time with the beat.

The surgery cost $88,000 (100 million won) for all four girls, with a clinic confirming that they had all gone through operations "above the waist".

“We all wanted to get some surgeries done to look prettier... and thought, ‘Why not perform a song about it instead of trying to conceal it?’", lead singer of the group Dain told AFP.

Not surprisingly, most netizens were positive about the girls' decision to document their experience.

"Good for them. They're brave enough to literally come out and say they got plastic surgery, unlike other K-pop idols", one said on YouTube.

"It takes a lot of bravery to be so open and honest about plastic surgery", another said.

Plastic surgery is common amongst K-pop stars, although documenting the process in this manner is relatively unheard of.

South Korea was previously named the "plastic surgery capital of the world" in a Business Insider report – and it is estimated that this type of surgery in the country are around 20 procedures per 1,000 people.

Before

After

Psy's Follow-up

Psy's follow-up to his global hit Gangnam Style – i.e. ‘Gentleman’ – has already clocked up more than 211 million views on YouTube, and even South Korea's president Park Geun-Hye showered him with praise.

Just days after its release, the music video has become the fastest video to hit the 100 million views mark, beating the previous record set by Susan Boyle's ‘I Dreamed A Dream’.

‘Gentleman’ also smashed the record for the most views in a single day after it notched up 20 million hits in its first 24 hours.

And his signature horse-riding dance from Gangnam Style is replaced with a pelvic thrust apparently known as the arrogant dance. Sorry, I am not a fan of his and so I will not be showing the said video here.

Interestingly, KBS, a major South Korean radio and television network, has banned the rapper's new video, claiming it could provoke anti-social behaviour. In the four-minute promo, the entertainer is shown jaywalking and kicking a cone that says 'no parking'. The state broadcaster said the scenes set a bad example to younger viewers and fell short of its standards.

Yesterday, I was at the Taman Indrahana Toastmasters meeting where I delivered my CC #3 speech titled “The Frog Prince”. The particular speech was based on a MAD cartoon (see below) that I chanced upon. To cap a good evening, I was also voted Best Speaker. I would give this meeting a score of an 8 over 10.

Sinful K-Pop

I came across a news report in a Malay daily, Sinar Harian that the Youth and Sports Minister had apologized “to all parties if they felt offended with the K-pop performances, which were said to involve indecent clothing”. Ahmad Shabery Cheek was referring to last week's One Million Youths Gathering 2012 – yup, the same event that also saw seventeen Malaysians got hit by a runaway car because of the absence of safety precautions at a drag car race – both were two of the 500-plus activities that were organized in order to “lure” Malaysian youths to go to Putrajaya and “show” their support for Najib Razak.

Ahmad Shabery even promised to be more considerate in future to ensure innocent Malaysians will not be wilfully exposed to demeaning displays of indecency. It seems that Perak mufti Harussani Zakaria was upset and last Tuesday, he criticized the youth event and said that it should not be tainted with foreign artistes who act and dress indecently. Predictably, PAS Youth information chief Riduan Mohd Nor also denounced the performances, labeling them "sinful". I find this kinda funny because how would they know if these acts are smutty or not unless they watched the said Korean acts? And if they did, wouldn’t they be guilty of indulging in sin? Besides, they might consider it shocking and shameless; others might consider it sensual and sexy.


Poor Ahmad Shabery! Being the politician that he is, especially if the barbs came from the pious and the godly, he felt compelled to respond. The organizers should have featured nasyid singers instead but then again, would they have drawn in the crowds?

I also read in The Star (June 02, 2012, p 14) that the three Korean acts consisting of U-Kiss, Teen-Top and Dal Shabet (photo above) were brought in at a cost of RM2.04 million. And the local artistes as well as other types of “entertainment” which were not specified came to another RM1.8 million. This whole Putrajaya event must surely have cost a bomb – there was a mention that the bill amounted to more than RM10 million! And for what purpose other than to make Najib “syiok sendiri” (“feel good”)?