As has often been pointed out, we live in an era where the traditional Anglo-American stranglehold over pop has been broken. Partly because streaming has presented listeners with a far broader choice of music than would once have been imaginable, and partly as a result of social media accounts doing the promotional departments’ job for them, the charts are now as likely to include music made in Seoul or Lagos as London or LA. Spurs’ 62,000-capacity stadium has recently hosted not just Jay-Z, Gorillaz and System of a Down, but India’s Arijit Singh, South Korea’s BTS, BigBang and Stray Kids, and Puerto Rico’s Bad Bunny, who addressed the crowd almost exclusively in Spanish.
Clearly, British audiences’ disinclination to be welded to English-speaking artists is a cheering thing. Equally clearly, there seem to be limits: the same interest hasn’t been afforded Francophone pop. The biggest French-speaking stars in recent memory have either dealt in dance music or acquiesced to recording in English. Belgian rapper Stromae has attracted media interest and co-signs from Kanye West and Lorde without ever progressing beyond cult status in the UK.
