How to Talk About Music and Musicians

Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody! My name is Alisha!

In this lesson, I'm going to talk about expressions to use for talking about music and musicians!

Let's get started!

On this side of the board, I have a list of some patterns that you can use for positive opinions and just sharing your positive statements.

Let's begin with talking about your favorites!

So, a way to express your favorite band or your favorite musician, your favorite artist, whatever, is this pattern.

[Musician] is my favorite!

I also have "are" here.

We use "is" for a single person here, like Beyonce or Lady Gaga.

But if your musician or band is a plural noun, so, for example, The Rolling Stones, it ends with an S here, this is a plural noun, we need to use "are." So this follows the same rules of grammar of English. So yes, even though it's a musician or like it's a band name, we still need to follow the rules of grammar, the grammar rules here.

So "is" and "are," these need to match your subject.

So, "Lady Gaga is my favorite!" is correct. So, this is one person, one individual. The title is also one person.

Here, however, "The Rolling Stones are my favorite."

"The Rolling Stones are my favorite."

So, you can think of this as like the plural form. Yes, it's one group, but we say, "The Rolling Stones are my favorite."

"The Rolling Stones is my favorite band" is okay, because "...is my favorite band," (band) is at the end of that sentence, so "The Rolling Stones is my favorite band." That's okay because "band" there is singular.

The Rolling Stones are my favorite though. So, we can imagine like the members of The Rolling Stones too, if that's helpful for you. So please be careful. Make sure your subject matches your verb here. So, single person, one name, is. A group of people, plural form, are.

Okay. So, let's continue to the next pattern, which is also very simple.

"I like [musician or band]!

Or...I love [musician or band]!

The difference here is just your level. "Like" is maybe here. "Love" is here.

So, "I love Beyonce!"

Or, "I love Lady Gaga!"

"I love The Rolling Stones"

You can use whatever you prefer here. You don't need to worry about singular or plurals with this pattern. Very simply, "I like" or "I love" plus your artist's name or your band name.

You can also use this pattern, like/love, with a genre, a genre.

So, a "genre" for music is a category or a type and that means, for music. It's like pop or rock music, classical music, rap, country, and so on. Those are categories of music. So, you can use this pattern to explain your favorite category, your favorite genre of music.

For example:

"I like rock."

Or…

"I love pop music."

Or…

"I like classical."

Or…

"I like rap."

So, you can use "like" or "love" to talk about your favorite artists or to talk about your favorite genre. /Genre/ is the pronunciation of this word.

Okay.

So, let's move on then to a sample conversation talking about a musician or band's new work.

For example:

"Have you heard [musician]'s new song or new track?"

We use these two words in the same way, to refer to one song or one track. One track is also okay.

"Single/album," these are a little bit different.

A "single" is one song, a single song that is released alone, usually before a full album. It's like one song like the highlight song from the album, we call that "the single" or "a single."

An "album" is a collection of songs, so like maybe 10 songs or 12 songs from that artist on one CD or in one release.

So…

"Have you heard [musician]'s new song?"

"Have you heard [musician]'s new track?"

Let's use Beyonce here, it's easy.

"Have you heard Beyonce's new song?"

To reply to this, you can say, yes or no, because this is a "have you heard…, have you heard…" meaning before this conversation, at any point in the past, do you have the experience of hearing Beyonce's new song?

So, "Yeah, I love it!"

You don't have to say, "Yes I have. I love it."

That's kind of unnatural. Just a "Yeah..." or "Yes, I love it!"

Or "Yeah, I like it!"

Or "Yeah, I really like it!"

Or "Yeah, I've heard it so many times."

Maybe in the radio or in stores, or rather, sorry, on the radio or in stores, when you're shopping, for example. Yeah, I've heard it so many times.

If you've heard this song and you're sort of tired of it, you can use this expression, "I'm sick of it." I'm sick of it, like yeah, I've heard it so many times, I'm sick of it. If it's a new song, like it's super popular, you might feel this way.

Or…"Yeah, it's OK."

So that's very neutral. It's like I don't like it, but I don't hate it either.

"Yeah, it's OK."

Or… "No, I haven't."

"No, I haven't."

Or just… "No," as well.

So, "Have you heard Beyonce's new song?"

"No, I haven't, but I hear it's good."

"I hear it's good." So, using present tense "hear" means right now, maybe I've heard, in the past, from many different people, it's good, so we use present tense to mean, at this point in time, it's common for me to hear from many different people that this song is good. You can use "I heard it's good" to mean like, for example, one report, according to one report, it was a good song." It's up to you. Both "hear" and "heard" are correct here.

So, you can use this for a song or for an album.

"Have you heard Beyonce's new album?"

"No, I haven't yet. I heard it's good though."

So, that's a very natural conversation.

"Have you heard Beyonce's new album?"

"Yeah, I love it!"

Or…"Have you heard Beyonce's new album?"

"Yeah, it's okay."

So, there are many different responses you can use and you can change these words at the end of these patterns to more accurately reflect your feelings.

So, "Yeah, it's okay."

"Yeah, it's all right."

"Yeah, it's pretty good."

Those are all perfectly natural responses.

Okay.

Let's move on then to a pattern you can use to talk positively and excitedly about concerts. So please keep in mind, in English, we use the word "concert." We do not say "live." We do not specifically say, like "live performance" when we're talking about a concert. I'll show one example where we do use the word "live" in just a moment.

But to talk about going to see a concert, we use a pattern like this.

"I'm going to the [musician] concert!"

So why do we use "the" here? Because this "the" connects to the verb (concert), so there is maybe only one concert by this musician in your city, so we use "the" before this to mean the one concert. There's only one, so I'm going to that one that many people know about.

For example, here:

"I'm going to the Justin Timberlake concert."

So, [the] [concert], there is only. I'm going to the Justin Timberlake concert that's happening tonight, so we use "the" before Justin Timberlake, yes, because "the" actually connects to "concert" here. So, I'm going to the Justin Timberlake concert.

Some other patterns you may hear are:

"I'm going to see Justin Timberlake's concert" is also okay.

"I'm going to see Justin Timberlake's concert."

Or just…

"I'm going to see Justin Timberlake tonight."

And we understand that it's a concert because probably, we don't meet these famous people in our everyday lives, for most people.

So generally, you'll hear a pattern like this one.

Then, after the concert, you can talk about the performance with something like this:

[Musician] was amazing!

Or…[Band] was amazing!

This is using past tense.

So, for example, if you go to a Justin Timberlake concert, you might say:

"Justin Timberlake was amazing!"

So, "was amazing" refers to the concert you saw, maybe last night or a few hours ago.

"Justin Timberlake was amazing!"

Please keep in mind, for a pattern like this, we need to follow the same rule I mentioned at the beginning of this lesson about this subject and verb agreement. So, "was," this is great for a single person like Lady Gaga or Justin Timberlake. If however, it's a group like The Rolling Stones again, "The Rolling Stones were amazing!"

"The Rolling Stones were amazing!"

So make sure, if you have a plural noun as in The Rolling Stones here, The Rolling Stones were amazing.

If you want to talk generally about an artist's performances, maybe not a specific performance, but generally, you can use a pattern like this. You'll notice here, I'm using present tense.

For example:

"Justin Timberlake is amazing live!"

This is one situation where we use the word "live" to talk about performances, which means Justin Timberlake's live performances are amazing. This is another way we say that.

"Justin Timberlake is amazing live!"

Or, "Lady Gaga is amazing live!"

We use "is" (present tense) to mean regularly. Her performances or his performances are always very good, so we use present tense to describe that.

"Lady Gaga is amazing live!"

So, instead of just, "Lady Gaga is amazing!" which means I really like her music, you can specifically say "live" to refer to those concerts, to refer to live performances.

Okay.

Let's move on then to a couple of expressions you can use to maybe make some negative statements about music, how to talk about the things you don't like very much or that you don't listen to.

For example:

"I don't really like…"

Or, "I don't really listen to…"

This is a bit different. So, I've included "really," because it's sort of a softener.

You can say:

"I don't like [musician]."

Or, "I don't like that band."

You can use that.

"Really" softens things a little bit. It's not quite so direct. So, here, my verb is "like."

"I don't really like Justin Timberlake."

"I don't really like Lady Gaga."

That's how a native speaker would say it. Instead of "I don't really like [enunciated]," it sounds like "I don't really like [native speed]."

"I don't really like Lady Gaga."

Or, "I don't really like The Rolling Stones."

If you want to be more specific though and say you don't really listen to that band or that musician, you can do that. So maybe they're okay, but you don't really listen to, which means, you don't often listen to. "Often," using "often" here would sound a little too polite. We tend to use "really" in cases like these, in casual conversations.

So, "I don't really listen to Lady Gaga."

Or, "I don't really listen to Justin Timberlake."

He seems okay, but I don't really listen to him.

You can use "listen to" to be more specific, like maybe he's okay. Maybe it's okay, but you don't listen to it very much. That's a good pattern. I don't really listen to Lady Gaga.

You can also use a genre here, as we talked about earlier in this lesson, pop, rock, classical and so on.

"I don't really listen to rock."

"I don't really listen to hip hop."

You can use that as well.

Here are a couple of patterns that you can think about to kind of make some more specific statements about your opinions.

For example:

"I don't really like pop music, so I don't listen to Lady Gaga."

At native speed, this would sound like:

"I don't really like pop music, so I don't listen to Lady Gaga."

So, here, we're connecting these ideas with "so."

Idea 1: I don't really like pop music.

Idea 2: I don't listen to Lady Gaga.

We connected it with "so" to show a relationship between these two.

One more example:

"I don't really listen to rock, but I like The Foo Fighters."

So, The Foo Fighters is a rock band, but here, the speaker says, "I don't really listen to rock." So maybe, they want to be specific. There is this one group, this one band, that's pretty good, that's okay.

So, at native speed, this would sound like:

"I don't really listen to rock, but I like The Foo Fighters."

So, if you want to show, like, kind of a contrast, you can use "but" to connect your ideas.

"I don't really listen to rock, but I like The Foo Fighters."

Another thing to be careful of is this one that I've marked here. The expression "I hate" is quite strong, so I would not recommend using it too much in conversation unless it's like a very casual conversation and you feel comfortable being very direct with the person you're speaking to.

For example:

"I hate country."

Or, "I hate rap."

These are genres. I've used a genre here.

"I hate country" or "I hate rap," that's very aggressive for some people, so please use this expression very carefully.

If you're not sure, use something like this:

"Nah, I don't really like country."

Or, "I don't really like rap."

So, instead of using, "I hate." "I hate" is quite strong in any situation, so please be careful about this.

So, these are a few expressions that you can use to talk about music and musicians that you like and dislike. I hope that it was helpful for you. Thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon. Bye-bye!

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