UK Bubble Hits Top 10: Foreign Tongue In a Free Market

How much foreign language music will you get to listen to this week? The UK has one of the most open musical charts in the world, although very much based on English speaking song lyrics. Welsh, Irish and Scottish artists have all featured over the last fifty years. So to have numerous Romanian (Inna and Alexandra Stan), French (Air) and German singers (Scooter) but not entirely always in native languages. The Cheeky Girls were Cheeky but in English. Today during December 2013, Americans, British and a New Zealand based singer called Lorde with Royals, sits high in the charts.

In a break from the norm, although a club hit. Avicii sits in at number two in the run up to Christmas. A Swedish DJ slamming into the UK Top 40 proper with Hey Brother. But continue scrolling and you'll find very few foreign tongued lyrics to mess with your ears this Christmas. The Fairytale of New York is back again, a special Yuletide song from the Irish Pogues, But unlike the rest of Europe, French group Klingande is nowhere to be seen with their recent release Jubel.

It's not that the UK charts don't accept foreign language music or foreign artists. It's possibly simply that budgets for marketing aren't heavy enough, despite the pay off being much greater if a song breaks into the English speaking market. A song that sits at number one in Switzerland can be found nowhere in the UK charts, Milky Chance with Stolen Dance.

Are European cultures and their vibes really so out of sync with each other? Language barriers should by no means defeat the objective that the feel and how the sound of singles or albums played make us feel.

You may of course contrast the Bubble Hit's view of the UK music scene against an article written in the Independent and Guardian in 2011. In which it detailed that there were absolutely no British artists - bar one in the top ten at all and the author was calling for a far stricter system like that of France and quotas.

However changing rules or initiating quotas doesn't make a music industry more competitive and only further restricts it. What matters is airplay and that foreign artists receive an equal chance to be heard on national UK radio waves and seen in promotional campaigns country wide. The UK Top 40 has been a traditional method of counting down the week's winners for as long as I can recall. Only it would be nice to see a European Top 40 get airtime in the UK, much to the behest of the population though. If only Europe existed with the European Union.

Bubblehits.co.uk Social Media