The 10 best songs to learn English

By Fabien Snauwaert, founder of Gliglish. I grew up in France, I speak 5 languages, and English is now the language I use most. Songs are a big part of how that happened.

Songs work for language learning because they do the boring part for you. Nobody replays a grammar exercise 50 times. Everybody replays a song they love 50 times, and by the tenth listen the phrases start coming out of your mouth on their own.

But not every song is a good teacher. The best songs to learn English are slow enough to follow, clear enough to imitate, and repetitive enough to remember. Here are ten that fit, ranked from beginner to advanced, with the specific thing each one teaches you.

How to learn English with a song (5 steps)

Pick a song you already like. You will replay it for free, which is the whole trick.
Read the lyrics once, with a translation, so you know what you are hearing.
Listen while reading the lyrics. Do this two or three times.
Sing along. Badly is fine. This is pronunciation practice disguised as fun.
Come back to it over the next days. The song does the spaced repetition for you.

Beginner: slow, clear, repetitive

1. "Let It Be" by The Beatles (1970)

Slow tempo, crystal-clear vocals, and a chorus built on three words. You will know it by heart before you decide to learn it.
What to notice: "there will be an answer" is the future with "will", the first future form you need.

2. "Stand by Me" by Ben E. King (1961)

Short lines, simple present tense, and a walking pace. One of the easiest famous songs to sing along to in English.
What to notice: "as long as you stand by me" teaches a condition without any grammar table.

3. "Count on Me" by Bruno Mars (2010)

Everyday vocabulary about friendship, sung clearly at a friendly speed.
What to notice: "you can count on me" is a real idiom natives use constantly, and it does not mean counting numbers.

4. "Perfect" by Ed Sheeran (2017)

A slow ballad with the plain, useful vocabulary of everyday romance: dance, dress, kids, home.
What to notice: "I found a love for me" is the simple past doing its job, no tricks.

Intermediate: stories and real grammar

5. "Someone Like You" by Adele (2011)

Adele enunciates better than most news anchors. The lyrics are full of phrases you can reuse the same week.
What to notice: "never mind, I'll find someone like you". "Never mind" alone is worth the listen.

6. "Viva la Vida" by Coldplay (2008)

A whole story told in the past. It opens with the single most useful structure for talking about your past.
What to notice: "I used to rule the world". Learn "used to" and you can narrate your life.

7. "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman (1988)

Plainspoken storytelling with working-life vocabulary: jobs, shelters, plans, checkout lines. Clear voice, moderate speed.
What to notice: "I've been working at the convenience store" is the present perfect continuous, in context, where it finally makes sense.

8. "Hotel California" by Eagles (1977)

A long narrative full of description, atmosphere, and one of the most quoted lines in rock.
What to notice: "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave" packs two modal verbs into one unforgettable sentence.

Advanced: speed, slang, and range

9. "Lose Yourself" by Eminem (2002)

Fast, dense, and full of idioms and connected speech. If you can follow this without the lyrics, you can follow any native speaker on the street.
What to notice: "snap back to reality". English glues verbs to particles; rap is where you hear it at full speed.

10. "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen (1975)

Six minutes that swing from ballad to opera to hard rock, with the vocabulary range to match.
What to notice: "easy come, easy go", an idiom you will hear for the rest of your life.

The problem with famous songs (and what to do about it)

None of these songs were written to teach you English. They bend grammar for rhythm, they reach for poetry over clarity, and they are about heartbreak and hotels in California, not about your job interview on Tuesday.

That is the gap Gliglish Music fills. Type any topic, pick a genre, and you get a song written to teach: every line is sung in English first, then in your language, so you understand everything on the first listen. It is free, and the song is about your life, so the vocabulary is vocabulary you will actually use.

🎤Make my free song

Hear what a song made to teach sounds like

Grocery Day

At the grocery store

🇺🇸 English · 🇪🇸 Spanish

🤘 Heavy Metal By Gliglish

My Favorite Movies

favourite movies

🇺🇸 English · 🇻🇳 Vietnamese

💜 K-Pop By Anonymous

At the Bakery

🇺🇸 English · 🇫🇷 French

🌴 Bossa Nova By Fabien

Say That Again?

Asking someone to repeat

🇺🇸 English · 🇧🇷 Portuguese

🌴 Bossa Nova By Gliglish

I Need to Fart

I want to fart