BAD BUNNY may not be a household name in the English-speaking world. Yet the Puerto Rican rapper, whose verses are usually in Spanish (and, on one occasion, Japanese), was the most played artist in 2020 and 2021 for listeners on Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming platform. Such success might have been harder to achieve 30 years ago when English was dominant. In the new digital era, it is becoming ever more common.
To investigate the evolution of music tastes across the world, The Economist trawled through the top 100 tracks in 70 countries according to Spotify. Examining 13,000 hits in 70 languages along with other data like genre, lyrical language and nationality of artist, we sought to group countries according to musical similarity.
On these 320,000 records, we employed a principal-components analysis to assess the degree of musical kinship between countries, and then a clustering algorithm (known as k-means) to group them. Three broad clusters emerged: a contingent in which English is dominant; a Spanish-language ecosystem; and a third group that mostly enjoys local songs in various tongues. Across all, one trend emerged: the hegemony of English is in decline.
Similarity of music streamed on Spotify*
Least similar
Most similar
United States
New Zealand
Saudi Arabia
South Africa
South Korea
Switzerland
Hong Kong
Guatemala
Czech Rep.
Philippines
Costa Rica
Singapore
Honduras
Argentina
Indonesia
Colombia
Denmark
Germany
Paraguay
Australia
Thailand
Morocco
Uruguay
Malaysia
Vietnam
Portugal
Belgium
Ecuador
Panama
Sweden
Norway
Canada
Austria
Greece
Mexico
Taiwan
Ireland
Poland
Bolivia
Britain
Turkey
France
Russia
Egypt
Brazil
Japan
Spain
Israel
Chile
India
Peru
Italy
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Britain
Canada
Czech Rep.
Denmark
Ireland
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Portugal
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
South Africa
Switzerland
United States
Brazil
↑ Countries within the
English-language group
have similar tastes
Egypt
France
Germany
Greece
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Israel
Italy
Japan
Morocco
Poland
Russia
South Korea
← The local-language group is
the most diverse. Many countries
here have a strong indigenous
music culture
Sweden
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Vietnam
Argentina
Bolivia
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Ecuador
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
← The Spanish-language group
has little in common with other
countries, but music taste here is
very homogenous
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Spain
Uruguay
*From a model comparing top tracks, artists, genres and languages between January 1st-November 12th 2021
The drop over the past five years is mostly concentrated outside the English sphere. Within the Spanish cluster, English quickly lost ground—from 25% of hits to 14%—as native artists like Bad Bunny and Rauw Alejandro became internationally ascendant. Among the local-language cluster, in countries with strong, indigenous music cultures—like Brazil, France and Japan—English declined even more precipitously, dropping from 52% of hit songs to just 30%. Only in the English cluster did the language remain unfazed, dropping only slightly from 92% to 90%.
There is no doubt that, despite its decline, English is still king. Of the 50 most-streamed tracks on Spotify over the past five years, 47 were in English. And the genres it incubated are being widely adopted elsewhere. There is now excellent rap available in Arabic, Russian and, of course, Spanish. A sign of the momentum in global-music tastes comes from a collaboration in 2018 between two superstars—Bad Bunny and Drake, the self-proclaimed king of rap in English. On that occasion, Drake delivered the chorus in Spanish.
Songs jump musical cultures more often than before. Modern drivers like social media are to blame. To demonstrate this, we plotted the most-streamed song for countries in each group weekly for the full five-year period, revealing precisely when and where these leaps happen.
Luis Fonsi (featuring Daddy Yankee) | “Despacito”
Crossovers can be engineered. “Despacito”, a huge hit in the Spanish-language ecosystem for Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee in the early months of 2017, ascended to the top spot in 36 countries elsewhere thanks to a remix featuring Justin Bieber, the Canadian pop sensation.
English-language group
Local-language group
Spanish-language group
2017
Original
Remix
Mariah Carey | “All I Want for Christmas is You”
Christmas is big business in the streaming charts. For that reason, Mariah Carey returns to the most-streamed lists seasonally on the strength of her modern-day Christmas classic. She takes the top spot in 24 countries in the English-language group, and manages to make incursions into the local-language group, for example in Germany.
English-language group
Local-language group
Spanish-language group
2020
Germany
Britain
BTS (featuring Halsey) | “Boy With Luv”
Many of the K-pop bands popular in South Korea manage to achieve global success by mixing in some English. Some simply mix in English words amid their Korean crooning. Others choose an English title. And some do entire songs in English. None has managed the transition as deftly as the boy band BTS, epitomised by their international hit “Boy With Luv” done with the American songwriter Halsey.
English-language group
Local-language group
Spanish-language group
2019
Vietnam
Malaysia
We have designed an interactive matrix showcasing the most-streamed song on Spotify in 70 countries every week from December 2016 to the first week of 2022. These range from global blockbuster hits like Ed Sheeran’s exceedingly saccharine and exceedingly catchy “Shape of You” to niche sensations in Japan and Iceland. Hover to reveal the song and its language, and see how far its popularity spread. Click to listen to snippets of every song and explore musical tastes around the world—from Polish rap to Brazilian pop.
Monday, July 18, 2022
What Spotify data show about the decline of English
A Short Reminder of the History of the Democrat Party in America
Young military leaders are taught to study history and battles to look for parallels. There are certain principles that are immutable and transcend time. Last week as we heard about the televised January 6th hearings, more of a Stalinesque show trial, I reflected back upon the history of the Democrat Party in America. It is a history that can be summed up in four S-words; slavery, secession, segregation, and socialism. And if there is one unifying word that transcends each of those phases, it is violence.
I need not articulate the abject violence of the period of slavery in the United States. But it is imperative to remind the readers that this heinous institution was wholeheartedly supported by one organization or political party. It is the same political party that did not support the ending of said institution, the Democrat Party. And as a further reminder, the Republican Party was established in 1854 as a single-issue political party, the abolition of slavery.
Now today, we no longer have the institution of slavery since the 13th amendment to our Constitution was passed. Albeit, Joe Biden asserts that no amendment to the constitution is absolute–go figure. But today, instead of physical bondage and enslavement, the same political party is pushing policies of economic bondage and enslavement…just look at the past 18 months of inflation, high gas prices, lack of baby formula, shrinking investment plans, and a retracting economy headed towards recession. Always remember, there are two ways to enslave individuals, work them for no pay or pay them for no work, one group has done both in America.
We hear all the claims of insurrection, and there is one party that did so and supported such action. And the same party has also been responsible for the creation of two deadly domestic terrorist organizations — the Ku Klux Klan and Antifa. I do not consider Black Lives Matter, Inc. a terrorist organization, but they are a subversive Marxist organization. All of these were part of the policy extension of the Democrats, who were responsible for Jim Crow 1.0. Matter of fact, it was a Democrat, first progressive, president, Woodrow Wilson, who hosted Klansmen in the White House to debut the film, “Birth of a Nation”. And let’s not forget the ugly history of lynching for which no Democrat president lifted a finger to end. And we know very well the documented history of the Democrats in the south, such as my ol’ Georgia Governor Lester Maddox. Many were friends of Joe Biden.
Assessing the violence brought forth by the aforementioned Democrat-sponsored groups is important. It was on President Trump’s inauguration day that cars were being torched, and storefront windows broken. It was a Bernie Sanders supporter who opened fire on the Congressional Republican baseball team practice. It was a leftist who hatched an assassination plot on a Supreme Court justice. It is a radical leftist pro-baby killing group, Jane’s Revenge, that has claimed responsibility for the firebombing, vandalizing, and destruction of churches and pro-life pregnancy centers. This same group has vowed continued violence against pro-life centers if they do not disband in 30-days.
We remember the summer of 2020, also known as the summer of violence. Funny, how authorities cannot seem to find any Antifa leaders or members and have them arrested. The establishment of an unconstitutional “autonomous zone” in Seattle was not deemed an insurrection, nor were the countless attacks on government buildings, police stations, and even an ICE headquarters.
And now we have progressive socialist leftists in positions such as district attorneys and judges who are releasing violent criminals back onto the streets…while calls still go forth to defund law enforcement. And open borders have created a drug, human, and sex trafficking crisis along with foreign terrorists flooding into our Country.
And somehow, the Democrat party and their leftist minions in the media and others want us to take them seriously with these staged and produced hearings?
There is a reason why the left wants to purge American history; facts are immutable, and as George Santayana hinted, oft time repeats itself to the unaware.
Tolerance has become a one-way street and when combined with an effort to disarm legal, law-abiding American citizens, it leads to cultural suicide, a perilous road to perdition.
Totalitarians and tyrants do not advance their cause by way of legitimate persuasion; it only comes by way of creating fear, intimidation, coercion, threats, and yes, violence. History is replete with such examples, and sadly, it is now playing out here in our America.
Our constitutional rights are immutable. This is why we are dedicated to defending them at the American Constitutional Rights Union. If we fail to protect them now, we fail to pass on individual rights, freedom, and liberty to subsequent generations…and that ain’t happening on my watch!
Steadfast and Loyal.
The Deranged Liberal World Order
“What you heard from the president today is a clear articulation of the stakes. This is about the future of the liberal world order and we have to stand firm.” – Biden administration National Economic Council Director, Brian Deese
This quote came during an interview on CNN with Mr. Deese after President Biden responded that the American people would have to endure the exorbitantly high fuel prices as long as the conflagration in Ukraine continues. In essence, what Brian Deese was expressing is what we would say in military vernacular, “embrace the suck.” And the “suck” is the liberal world order, better known as the progressive socialist Marxist ideological agenda.
First, as a matter of political philosophical clarification, what the left desires really has nothing to do with classical liberalism, as advanced by John Locke, which is rooted in individual liberty and freedom. The socialist, globalist, linguistic manipulators of the left kidnapped the term liberal to mask their true Marxist nature.
This thing called the “liberal world order” is what then candidate Obama asserted back in late October 2008 in Columbia Missouri, the fundamental transformation of the United States of America. Now, I spent some 22 years in the U.S. Army “embracing the suck” for a noble reason, supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States. I will not embrace the deranged concept of a liberal world order…and it appears that I am far from being alone.
Look at the recent developments in the country of Sri Lanka. They rejected the liberal world order, big time. Sri Lanka once boasted an ESG (environmental social governance) score of 98%. See, when you score high on the liberal world order, the end result is economic collapse, high energy and food costs, and equal sharing of misery. As well, further evidence of the deranged liberal world order is in the Netherlands where farmers are rejecting the destruction of their livelihood due to high fertilizer costs, as well as fuel.
Hmm, does any of this sound familiar?
This is what President Biden and his incompetent economic council advisor Brian Deese are pushing upon the American people. Point of order, a recent report from real economists, Stephen Moore and Jon Decker of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, examined the resumes of 68 Biden economic advisors and discovered over 60% had no business experience. In other words, the deranged liberal world order is being advanced by economic “know-nothings”…remember that political party from the mid-1800s? Well, these economic know-nothings are the reason why America has a 9.1% rate of consumer and an 11.3% rate of producer inflation. And this rising inflation is far outpacing the wage growth in America, but we are supposed to embrace this suck, the liberal world order.
The green new deal is so successful here in Texas that ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) told Texans last week to tamp down energy use. The reason? Well, those wind turbines, which cause so many traffic delays being transported by trucks on roads, ain’t turning because the wind ain’t blowing. Even Tesla headquarters sent out a notice to Tesla owners in Texas to refrain from charging between the hours of 2-8pm. Energy sources should be dependable, accessible, and reliable. What Texans have learned recently is that solar panels and wind turbines freeze over in the winter and wind fails in the summer. Heck, even Germany has decided to reopen coal fired plants. Instead, our president jets off to Saudi Arabia to fist bump and beg a maniacal tyrant for energy resources when we have an abundance here, and a better quality. That is just stuck on stupid.
But the deranged liberal world order is not just about energy and food costs and inflation.
The dangerous liberal world order is one that promotes releasing violent criminals and felons from incarceration. While a bodega store worker who defended himself against a released criminal should be incarcerated. This is a world order that does not believe you, the legal, law- abiding citizen, has the constitutional right to keep and bear arms for your self-defense and protection. As the Mayor of Philadelphia asserted, only police should possess firearms. How well did that work out for the helpless children in Uvalde Texas?
The liberal world order is a collection of delusional ideas and policies intent on tearing down the fabric of a civil society. It advances insidious open borders policy that enables a drug, sex, and human trafficking epidemic. It promotes the idea that men can get pregnant and biological males should compete against females…hence ending the achievements of Title IX. The liberal world order would rather not teach our children reading, writing, math, and science, but about drag queens and gender modification procedures and hormonal therapies.
And most diabolical, is the liberal world order’s insatiable thirst for murdering unborn babies.
No, we should not embrace the suck of the deranged liberal world order, which is a recipe for chaos, failure advanced by know-nothings and evil doers.
What we should be embracing is the foundation of the longest running constitutional republic the world has ever known–the U.S. Constitution and our free market economic system. That is what we embrace at the American Constitutional Rights Union…join us.
Steadfast and Loyal.
Does the Progressive Socialist Left Read the Constitution?
This is a very tumultuous and critical time in the life cycle of our Constitutional Republic. It was just a few weeks ago that I penned a missive titled “Constitutional Rights vs Ideological Rights” for this conservative platform. Who would have ever thought how quickly that writing would come to fruition? I must admit, after last week’s apoplectic meltdowns by the progressive socialist leftists I have to wonder if they have ever read the Constitution of these United States of America?
Let’s begin with the left’s burdensome concealed carry restrictions that were overturned by the Supreme Court last week. When one reads the text of the Second Amendment, it clearly articulates that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” And what is the purpose of that right? Simple, it is for the security of a free state, meaning our nation. For leftists to impart a delusional restriction forcing legal, law-abiding Americans to prove why they need to be armed and protected outside of their home is absurd and unconstitutional.
Are our freedoms of religion, speech, expression, and right to peacefully assemble relegated to our homes? No, but perhaps that is the leftist goal. This is why at the American Constitutional Rights Union we will continue to fight for our God-given rights, as we did by filing an amicus brief in the case of New York State Rifle and Pistol Association vs. Bruen.
In essence, the left in America wants citizens to be subjects and victims to the criminals that they are releasing in droves back onto our streets. I find it quite perplexing that the Second Amendment is a specified, enumerated right of the people in our first 10 amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights. Yet, it appears that the leftists have never read the Constitution to garner that pretty basic concept.
Instead, the leftists advance their ideological agenda, disarming legal, law abiding, responsible gun owners. Remember what leftist Congressman from Rhode Island, David Cicilline said, “I don’t want to hear about constitutional rights BS.”
That leads to the next case of leftist derangement, the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Let’s go to Article III of the Constitution where we find the duties, roles, and responsibilities of the Judicial Branch of our government. The courts are supposed to interpret the law, not make law, nor create individual rights. Sadly, this is all lost on our rather misguided leftist friends. They believe that courts should make law rather than issue decisions. Roe is not and has never been the “law of the land” because it cannot be found anywhere in the Constitution and the legislative branch has never passed it and submitted it to the executive branch to become law.
As well, there is nothing in the Constitution that grants an individual right to privacy that permits murder, by dismemberment, of an unborn child. But facts seem to get in the way of the abject irrational emotionalism of Marxists. They do not believe in the three branches of government, but rather the three branches of rule: media, academia, and the courts. Therefore, through those mediums they can force their tyrannical will and agenda upon the people by way of centralized totalitarianism.
Unfortunately, the left wants to tell us all that we cannot defend ourselves nor the most vulnerable in America—the unborn. The decision goes back to the States, where it should have been. Matter of fact, Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution lists the 18 duties, roles, responsibilities, purview, and jurisdictions of the federal government. The 10th Amendment states that all powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states, and to the people. Joe Biden has said, no amendment to the Constitution is absolute. I have to wonder if he has ever read the Constitution.
Last week, Democrats and a handful of Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate passed unconstitutional “gun control” legislation. It is utterly despicable that these ideologues are going to use taxpayer funding to support an unconstitutional action called “Red Flag Laws” that violate the 2nd, 4th, and 5th amendments to our Constitution, specified, enumerated rights in the individual Bill of Rights.
Lastly, can someone explain to me how violent Antifa members can have charges dropped against them? Or how a militant leftist group called Jane’s Revenge issues threats of violence and intimidation and actually firebomb property, yet not be prosecuted or named a domestic terrorist organization?
But if a concerned parent shows up at a school board meeting to exercise their First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances they could be designated as a domestic terrorist.
Back on July 31, 1982, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign, and domestic. And in order to be a defender, I read, and continue to read and study the Constitution. Today, as the Executive Director of the American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU), I am proud to be on the frontlines, here in our Republic. Former members of the Reagan administration founded the ACRU to fight back against leftist ideologues who wage war against our Constitution and rule of law.
We know that the left does not care about the Constitution, but may I ask, do you? And if you do, are you willing to support and defend it?
Steadfast and Loyal.
Sunday, July 17, 2022
A Runaway Executive Branch Threatens Our Free Society
Can you imagine forcing a Catholic nurse to participate in an abortion procedure? Or telling a foster care and adoption agency it must violate core tenets of its faith or shut its doors? How about mandating a doctor perform an irreversible procedure on an adolescent that goes against her medical judgment and deeply held beliefs?
Well, unfortunately, we don’t have to use our imagination because all of this is actually happening, and much more, because the president of the United States has acted as if his job is to not just enforce the law—as defined by the Constitution—but to also write the law.
One of the biggest threats to liberty is a run-away executive branch that unleashes a flurry of federal rules, regulations, and actions that erode religious freedom, free speech, the sanctity of life, parental rights, and marriage and family.
President Biden’s administration is rewriting laws passed by Congress to force a radical political agenda on American citizens—in many cases, making the laws almost unrecognizable from their original intent.
Take, for example, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the landmark civil rights law that gave women equal opportunity in education and athletics. President Biden and his education secretary have now proposed regulations that dismantle Title IX, threatening the entire category of women’s sports by allowing men to compete, and dominate, on their teams.
In addition to denying women a fair and level playing field in sports, the administration’s new Title IX rule could impose widespread harms in a host of other areas, including depriving students and professors of free speech on campus, requiring doctors to perform medical procedures that violate their conscience and professional ethics, usurping parental rights to make education and health care decisions for their kids, and allowing men to share women’s showers and dorm rooms.
To be fair, recent U.S. presidents have all struggled to stay in their lane, but in the year and a half since he’s held office, President Biden has signed 92 executive orders, outpacing any other president in executive overreach since the late ‘70s.
Most egregiously, though, through his reinterpretation of federal law and unlawful enforcement of regulations, President Biden is targeting people of faith. His administration is systematically stripping away religious exemptions that people of faith have long enjoyed as a way to honor their religious beliefs and still be able to participate as valuable members of society and earn a living. The results have been devastating for small business owners trying to make a living, nonprofit organizations seeking to do the most good in their communities, and individual students, professors, doctors, pastors, and other everyday citizens seeking to live and work in a manner consistent with their religious beliefs.
For example, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services rule is forcing a Tennessee Christian children’s home to make an untenable choice between violating its religious beliefs or losing critical funding needed to sustain its operation. Up until recently, faith-based charities like Holston United Methodist Home for Children had received a religious exemption to be able to place thousands of children in forever homes, but the Biden administration has rescinded all those religious exemptions.
Or take another HHS rule that forces doctors to perform controversial procedures on adolescents seeking to alter their biological sex in violation of their medical judgment and deeply held beliefs. Or the directive from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that is forcing a Christian college in Missouri to violate its beliefs by opening its dorms, showers, and other shared spaces to members of the opposite sex.
The list goes on and on… decisions made by huge, powerful federal agencies led by unelected, unaccountable, political bureaucrats foisted upon us. Americans who cherish our constitutional order and the individual liberty it was created to protect can feel intimidated and powerless against such a machine, but the good news is that we have another, equally powerful, branch in our republic. And it is exactly for moments like these when the judicial branch goes to work.
The federal government must be challenged, reigned in, and controlled by duly elected officials and by courts of law. If politicians and bureaucrats are allowed to brazenly ignore the constitutional limits on their power whenever they please, we no longer live in a free society.
That’s why Alliance Defending Freedom exists. We’re defending the Christian college in Missouri, the children’s home in Tennessee, the doctors, the professors, the students, the female athletes, the small business owners. The highly skilled litigators on ADF’s regulatory team are holding government accountable and challenging this administration in court when they step out of bounds. We’re giving power back to the people to defend themselves against their own government.