However, whether we're talking about French electronic and Japanese indie or K-pop and Spanish jazz, it's common for people to listen to songs they don't even understand.
Indeed, not knowing the language of the lyrics doesn't stop people from liking—and sometimes even singing along to—a song.
Just think about “Macarena” by Los del Río or the infamous “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi feat. Daddy Yankee, later popularized by Justin Bieber (who doesn’t speak Spanish). And it's not about people who only speak English, either. Many people don’t, yet Megan Thee Stallion’s and Dua Lipa’s “Sweetest Pie” are still topping music charts around the globe.
“It’s a complicated [topic],” ethnomusicologist Lisa Decenteceo, who teaches musicology at the University of the Philippines Diliman, told Vice adding that it all starts with what’s called “sound symbolism.”
Sound symbolism, according to Decenteceo, refers to the study of the relationships between utterances and their meaning. This doesn’t have to do only with music. Marketers, for example, can tune into sound symbolism as part of their strategy in coming up with appealing brand names. In music as well as in branding, Decenteceo explained, there’s something about the appeal of words as sounds, beyond their meaning in a language.
“Most of the time, when listening to music in a foreign language, we enjoy the lyrics as sounds and not words,” Thea Tolentino, a music teacher and music therapy master’s student based in Melbourne, added.
While things like culture and personal experiences affect people’s responses to different kinds of music, Tolentino said there are certain musical techniques that are generally used to convey certain moods. One of which is scale, or the graduated series of notes, tones, or intervals dividing octaves.
“Songs in a major scale usually have brighter, happier sounds, while minor scales usually have the slightly darker, melancholic feel,” she said.
Tolentino explained that the human brain is wired to respond to sound. In a process called entrainment, the brain “synchronizes our breathing, our movement, even neural activities [with the sounds we hear].”
This is actually the reason why fast-paced music is so popular for running or why some yoga teachers play rhythmic and melodic tracks during their classes.
Decenteceo, the ethnomusicologist, explained that “the music does something to the text,” from the way the words are sung, to the way the voice is used—for instance, “if the singing is raspy, if it’s shrill.”
