{"id":1930,"date":"2012-09-18T00:50:42","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T16:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/?p=1930"},"modified":"2016-02-04T13:59:28","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T13:59:28","slug":"12-songs-to-learn-chinese-and-expand-your-horizons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/12-songs-to-learn-chinese-and-expand-your-horizons\/","title":{"rendered":"12 songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the second part in my miniseries about listening to music in Chinese. So far, the following articles have been published. It is likely that there will be more articles in the future when I have discovered more great music I want to share.<\/p>\n

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  1. Why learning Chinese through music is underrated<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. 12 songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons<\/a> (this article)<\/li>\n
  3. 13 more songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. 14 extra songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The following is the same introduction as that found in the previous article, included here for clarity.<\/p>\n

    Click here<\/a> to skip directly to the music.<\/p>\n

    Not everybody will like everything, but you will like something<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The purpose of this article is to get you started on using Chinese music to learn Chinese Therefore, I’ve picked a wide variety of music and included links to YouTube versions of these songs. There might be better versions out there with more suitable subtitles and so on, but the goal here is to introduce you to good music, not teach you the lyrics.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>

    Image credit: sxc.hu\/profile\/sraburton<\/p><\/div>\n

    I have used four criteria when selecting the songs:<\/p>\n

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    1. I think they are good<\/strong> in some way (which is not related to lyrics)<\/li>\n
    2. They are unique<\/strong> in some way (voice, instruments, style)<\/li>\n
    3. They represent a genre<\/strong> which isn’t mainstream<\/li>\n
    4. They have interesting lyrics<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Note that I don’t claim that all songs and artists are famous (although most are) in China. Neither do I claim that they are all good for language learning purposes (I might not even like listening to them, but you might!). The goal is to find music you like, which is, in my opinion, more important than finding the perfect song for language learning. If you like all kinds of music, then pick a song I’ve written “clear Mandarin” or similar next to.<\/p>\n

      If you want to recommend other artists or songs to me or other readers, please leave a comment!<\/p>\n

      <\/a>12 songs to learn Chinese and expand your horizons<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The Last Successor – \u91ca\u653e<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The description gives this as progressive rock (which I’m not really sure I agree with) and power metal (which seems much more accurate). I had to search a while before I found any nice metal in Chinese, most likely because I don’t really enjoy the genre in English either.<\/p>\n