Most popular songs are lexically and semantically simple and easy to understand. Students can listen to songs over and over again, and can sing or speak along with them to improve their pronunciation. Using songs to improve pronunciation is a traditional technique in foreign language teaching; Elizabeth Eva Leach points out
that songs were used to teach French in 14th-century England (2005), and Signe
Denbow shows how songs are used to teach French pronunciation and grammar to singers today (1994). Also, remembering new words in a foreign language can be difficult, and the melody, rhyme, and structure of a song are effective memory aids. Listening to the sounds of words in songs provides a model for improving pronunciation. Repeated listening to a song can help students become accustomed to unfamiliar language sounds like consonantal clusters, diphthongs and phrasal intonation.
Songs can be used to help familiarize students not only with standard pronunciation, but also with a variety of accents and regional dialects. Most modern English-language pop songs are sung in a standard mid-Atlantic accent, no matter where the song was recorded or the native language of the singer, but there are many exceptions: Londoner Mick Jagger sang “you cain’t always git what you wawnt” in an exaggerated American dialect (Jagger and Richards 1969). Bob Marley sang in a light Jamaican accent that was easily understood by most non-Jamaicans, and easily copied by Cockney Eric Clapton, whose cover of Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” (1973) was a big hit in 1974.
Rap and hip-hop songs, on the other hand, are often recorded in more or less authentic dialects, complete with idioms, colloquialisms and slang, sparking an interest in other cultures. Slovenian rap lyrics, for example, recorded mainly in Slovene, are sprinkled with English swear and curse words such as “Bitch,” “Nigga,” and “madafaka” (Šabec 2013: 94).
Tim Murphey notes that a common feature of pop recordings is that, for one reason or another, the pronunciation of some words and phrases is incomprehensible
(1990: 25). This can be a challenge to students of a foreign language, as well as to native speakers. Hugo Keiper claims that this is not always a bad thing: mondegreens can be used creatively to help understand the distortion and the reasons for it (2008: 32).