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! 

83 of the World’s 100 Worst Polluted Cities are in India

All but one of the 100 cities with the world’s worst air pollution last year were in Asia, according to the 2023 IQAir World Air Quality Report, with the climate crisis playing a pivotal role in bad air quality that is risking the health of billions of people worldwide. 

 

The vast majority of these cities – eighty-three – were in India and all exceeded the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines by more than 10 times, according to the report by IQAir, which tracks air quality worldwide. The study looked specifically at fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, which is the tiniest pollutant but also the most dangerous. 

 

Only 9% of more than 7,800 cities analyzed globally recorded air quality that met WHO’s standard, which says average annual levels of PM2.5 should not exceed 5 micrograms per cubic meter. 

 

“We see that in every part of our lives that air pollution has an impact”, said IQAir Global CEO Frank Hammes. “And it typically, in some of the most polluted countries, is likely shaving off anywhere between three to six years of people’s lives. And then before that will lead to many years of suffering that are entirely preventable if there’s better air quality”. 

 

When inhaled, PM2.5 travels deep into lung tissue where it can enter the bloodstream. It comes from sources like the combustion of fossil fuels, dust storms and wildfires, and has been linked to asthma, heart and lung disease, cancer, and other respiratory illnesses, as well as cognitive impairment in children. 

 

Begusarai, a city of half a million people in northern India’s Bihar state, was the world’s most polluted city last year with an average annual PM2.5 concentration of 118.9 – 23 times the WHO guidelines. It was followed in the IQAir rankings by the Indian cities of Guwahati, Assam; Delhi; and Mullanpur, Punjab. Across India, 1.3 billion people, or 96% of the population, live with air quality seven times higher than WHO guidelines, according to the report. 

 

Central and South Asia were the worst performing regions globally, home to all four of the most polluted countries last year: Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Tajikistan. South Asia is of particular concern, with 29 of the 30 most polluted cities in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. The report ranked the major population centers of Lahore in 5th, New Delhi in 6th and Dhaka in 24th place. 

 

IQAir found that 92.5% of the 7,812 locations in 134 countries, regions, and territories where they analyzed average air quality last year exceeded WHO’s PM2.5 guidelines. 

 

Only 10 countries and territories had “healthy” air quality: Finland, Estonia, Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius and French Polynesia.

No Air Defense, No Air Force, No Money, Complains Slovakia

Slovakia’s continuous military aid to Ukraine under the previous government has left the country’s own defense posture badly damaged, with “years” now needed to fix it, the current Slovak Defense Minister Robert Kalinak admitted.

 

“The former government left us without our own anti-aircraft defenses, without combat aviation, and we don’t even have the promised 700 million for MiGs, which the government also handed over to Ukraine”, he complained.

 

The minister (left), who assumed office back in October under the new government led by Prime Minister Robert Fico, accused his predecessors of simply surrendering key military assets to Ukraine without coming up with any plan to secure their replacements. [Note: Slovakia had sent military aid in thirteen packages worth 671 million euros ($718.24 million) to Kyiv since Russia's Special Military Operation in February 2022 before Fico's appointment].

 

The defense ministry had effectively been run by “people with qualities of pugs rather than wolves”, Kalinak told the Standard newspaper on Thursday.

 

Upon his electoral victory in September, Fico (left) had immediately halted the country’s military aid to Kiev, as well as pledged to block Ukraine’s potential accession into the US-led NATO bloc. 

 

The new PM has repeatedly criticized the Western approach to handling the Ukraine conflict, arguing that the enduring support of Kiev turned into a “futile waste of human resources and money”, which only prolongs the hostilities and fills Ukrainian cemeteries with “thousands of dead soldiers". 

 

Fico wrote in Slovakia’s Pravda newspaper last week, promising that he will no longer be subject to stupid liberal and progressive demagoguery. Regrettably, much of Europe is very much caught up in this farcical foolishness – and it will be at their peril.

 

Methinks, Boeing are cursed! 

 

On Friday, a Boeing 747 cargo jet in the US flying from Miami, Florida to Puerto Rico caught fire while it was still above Miami, prompting a stunned witness on the ground to shout, "Oh my God, it's on fire. Oh my God!"

 

Fortunately, the Atlas Air flight, with five people on board, safely returned to Miami International Airport. 

 

A preliminary report by the FAA says the plane experienced "engine failure" and that a "post flight inspection revealed a softball-size hole above #2 engine".

 

Stay tuned for more Boeing mishaps.

The Pose of the Dead

At the family’s request, a funeral home in New Orleans posed the body of Miriam Burbank for her service this month. Credit Percy McRay, via Reuters 

The body of boxer Christopher Rivera is propped up on a staged boxing ring during his wake in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Image credit: http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2014/06/23/funeral-homes-pose-deceased/

A New Orleans funeral home is at the forefront of a macabre trend in which families have their deceased loved ones propped up and arranged in elaborate, diorama-like scenes, but not everyone is taking their unusual practices sitting (or lying) down. 

According to the New York Times, the phone at the Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home has been ringing off the hook ever since its June 12 viewing for Miriam Burbank – who died at 53 – whose body was posed sitting at a kitchen table, with a glass of Busch beer in one hand and in the other hand, a menthol cigarette between her fingers, just as she had spent a good number of her living days. 

 

 

Louis Charbonnet, the funeral director of the Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home in New Orleans, USA, said he had arranged two such services. Credit Bryan Tarnowski for The New York Times 

It was the second service of its kind conducted by funeral director Louis Charbonnet, whose 132-year-old mortuary, known around town for "its ability to put the 'fun' in funeral," has also hosted mariachi bands and even parades. The first viewing, for a brass band leader in 2012, found the deceased standing with his hands curled over his walking cane, wearing a jauntily tilted derby. 

But as with any trend, not everyone approves of what Charbonnet has said is only his attempt to honor his clients' wishes. Those who opposed have called out his viewings as potentially sacrilegious. 

Still, as he's quick to point out, Charbonnet is far from the first mortician to offer services of this kind. 

The phenomenon first appeared in Puerto Rico in 2008, four years before the first such funeral in New Orleans, with a 24-year-old murder victim whose viewing took place in his family’s living room, the body tethered against a wall. Angel Luis Pantojas’s funeral – called “muerto parao,” dead man standing – became an instant sensation. 

Another murder victim, on a motorcycle, followed, along with the paramedic and the man dressed like Guevara. This year, a boxer’s body was arranged standing in a ring, and an elderly woman was propped up in her rocking chair. The same funeral director, of the Marín Funeral Home in San Juan, arranged all of these. 

Maybe, when I give up the ghost – I would like to pose standing at the doorway and greeting guests at my own service! That would be really cool!