Why I don’t write lyrics in my mother tongue

Most songs played in the radio are English. Plenty of artists come of English-speaking countries, but even artists, who grew up somewhere else, try to write their lyrics in English. It may be a good idea if you want to grow a larger audience, but it’s only one of the reasons.

My mother tongue is German. It’s the language I grew up with, the language I need for my daily business and entertainment. In contrast to most European countries, Germans are used to dub foreign TV shows and movies. If you really want to learn English, French or Spanish, you have to buy or stream the content with subtitles. In the previous decades, listening to German pop music has been quite uncommon. Every artist who wanted to grow a larger audience started to perform in English.

This changed dramatically during the last years since German Schlager adapted the euro dance sounds from the 2000s, a large scene of German Rap (“Deutschrap”) grew and heavy metal bands singing in German (“Neue Deutsche Härte” and lots of metal bands) became successful in Eastern Europe and North America. People listening to German music became more diverse in age and taste. Now, lots of songs in the charts are in German.

I never cared about the language of the lyrics as a listener. My musical taste is international and eclectic. I listen to everything between Japanese indie rock music, Swedish electro pop, Finnish heavy metal, French chansons or Korean r’n’b. Even without understanding a word, I can fall in love with the flow or feeling of a song. Every language has a different phrasing and melodic structure. German is known for lengthy words and lots of hard consonants. I think it matches well to harder styles of music, but I have trouble listening to ballads.

A good lyricist is able to find the right words for a given phrasing, but this can be very challenging to find a similar word with more or less syllables, a weaker or harder sound or where the accent is just on the right spot. But how could you re-phrase a German word like “Son-nen-un-ter-gang” (sundown), when your next best alternatives are “A-bend-rot” (afterglow), “Däm-mer-ung” (dawn) or complete phrases like “Wenn die Son-ne un-ter geht” (when the sun goes down)? Sooner or later, you have to play around with images and phrases. I like to write in English because most words have 2-4 syllables, which offers a lot of flexibility. On the other hand, longer words result in more flexibility on real double or triple rhymes.

I started learning English quite early, but I’d call myself fluent since about 10 years. It did not keep me from writing English lyrics since I was a kid. Listening to the radio I grew up with British and American music, but the main reason for writing in English is, that I can express my emotions and thoughts more consistent than in German. Using technical and direct language in German sounds super formal and cold, but it’s okay in English.

When I write lyrics, I do not think about a better word, it’s just there and expresses my thoughts on point. Kudos to the wordsmiths out there; I’m definitely not a poet. Furthermore, English language works well on the music I write. I tried to write pop rock songs in German, the rhythm and phrasing was okay, but I was not able to relate to the content. I know that I make some mistakes on grammar and choice of words, but I try to improve. When I work with native speakers, it’s okay to correct my mistakes or change some words unless the structure and rhyming scheme is maintained.

Besides all that, English became my favourite language for communication. Did you know that I write my blog posts in English first and translate them into German right after? I just figured out that it’s harder for me to translate from German to English. I still look up some terms here and there, but most of the time, I just write what I think. Hopefully, my language skills are good enough to follow my train of thoughts.

Do you write lyrics and poems in your mother tongue?
Why – and why not?