A fact you might not know: France has a law in effect that mandating that between 35-60% of music played on privately owned radio stations must be in French, depending on the type of station. (Stations geared toward “young talent”, which I assume means pop stations, must play 35% French-language music, while stations devoted to traditional French music are mandated a 65% French-language playlist.) When I studied abroad in Nantes, the radio stations got around the law by playing most of the French music in the middle of the night. It was a clever loophole: the daytime airwaves were thereby freed up for more popular imported songs, and the stations followed the letter of the law without losing listeners.
I expected the radio situation here might be similar, but as far as I know, Spain has no such rule. Despite the lack of legislation, though, there is a lot of pop music in Spanish on the radio, and most of it (by my standards at least) is pretty good. Spain, unlike France, has the advantage of being able to import music in the right language from Mexico and South America, which certainly opens up the musical possibilities. This isn’t to say there’s any shortage of music in English--you can easily hear Katy Perry, Beyonce, and even a song I heard a lot in Indiana this summer, “
Need You Now,” which is currently number 16 on the Spanish charts and more than a little country. But there’s also a lot of Spanish music that is actually from Spain, and most of it is quite catchy. Three of my current Spanish pop favorites are
here,
here, and
here (this video is truly odd). There are also several
flamenco-only radio stations, which are popular among members of the blasting-music-from-vehicles club in the neighborhood where I teach. It's a comforting thing to remember: among the many small trials of living abroad (no bagels, having the verbal
élan of an eight-year-old, struggling to determine the proper response when urged to drink liquor at 11AM by a kindly Spanish grandmother), at least there's no shortage of good music.
