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Mr. Lava's Eurodata Center Is there a connection between the number of English-language songs on a country's pop charts and the population of that country? (Published 24 April 2009) English dominates all the Euro charts, and it's not even a particularly popular first language in Europe. Of course, that's because it's an extremely popular second language. But other languages appear on charts across Europe as well. German-language songs sometimes chart in Hungary and Scandinavia, for example. All countries, regardless of size, have populations that desire and appreciate hearing songs in their own primary languages. But many countries might seek acceptance in other markets by falling back on the universal language of English. This seems to be especially true in Romania, a country whose original pop songs were almost all in the Romanian-language through 2004 (when Moldovan group O-Zone's Romanian-language "Dragostea din tei" exploded on the world charts). Today, Romania's artists usually sing in English. But if your country has an enormous population it might make sense to stick to your own language—the one you're most comfortable with. The market is large enough to support your lifestyle, and you have the added benefit of not singing in hilariously mangled English. I wondered if countries with larger populations were likely to have a higher percentage of non-English songs (i.e., songs usually in their native language) on their charts, whereas countries with smaller populations would sing more often in English in a bid to expand their market. Here is what I found.  Turkey is quite an outlier; I do not know whether to trust that chart. But I found that even if we throw out Turkey's figures altogether the trendline still moves upward with country population. Iceland is worth a mention; I suspect being stuck on a tiny island leads to a sort of linguistical isolationism. One could argue for the removal of Ireland and the UK from the study, since English is the primary language of both places. But in a way they cancel one another's influence on the trendline out, since one is on one end of the graph and one is on the other. Other limits to the study include the myriad variables that go into shaping a country's top 40 chart, and the different ways by which countries might go about doing that (apples vs. oranges). One reason a country might have mostly English on its charts is because it simply doesn't have a large pop scene of its own, so the slots are filled up with English-speaking invaders. I suspect the sizes of pop scenes are directly proportional to population (based on many months of carefully studying the pop charts), but confirming that suspicion would be worthy a future study. Difficulties in such a study would include knowing the country of residence for every single performer on every pop chart in Europe. I'll wait until I'm paid to conduct such research before embarking on that one! ;-) The statistical information regarding populations comes from the CIA World Factbook. Statistical information regarding pop charts comes from those linked from Charly 1300's site on 16 April 2009, with the exception of Poland's, which came from http://euro200.net/Polish-Top50.htm and Turkey's, which came from http://www.billboard.com.tr/pages/Turkce_top20.aspx
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