Introduction - Episode 0

Hello and welcome to the first episode of Learning English with Lyrics, I'm your host, Jake, and in this episode I'm going to explain what this podcast is and what it is not, as well as go over a few terms that we are going to be using a lot.

Firstly, what is the purpose of this podcast? Each episode of this podcast, we will take part of a song and explain it carefully, line by line. We will spend most of our time together focusing on interesting phrases, grammar, and vocabulary. We'll also discuss the meaning of some of the lyrics, but that will not be our primary focus.

Secondly, who is this podcast for? If you are an intermediate English learner, or an advanced learner trying to work on their vocabulary and comprehension, this podcast is for you. I will be carefully explaining the more interesting parts of the songs, but I won't be explaining everything. I want you to feel challenged, but not overwhelmed.

Thirdly, how should you listen to this podcast? You are of course free to listen to the episodes in any order that you choose, but my recommendation is to start at the beginning and listen to the podcasts in order. We will try to build on the concepts that have been explained in previous episodes, so it will be most helpful for you if you listen to them in order.

Before each episode, I'd recommend listening to the song that we are about to discuss. I encourage you to spend some time trying to figure out the song by yourself if you can! You can even look up the lyrics if that makes it easier for you, though I recommend seeing if you can understand without the lyrics first. Even if you feel that you understand the song, I hope that each episode will be interesting, and I will be trying to provide interesting details that you might not otherwise know or understand.

Fourthly, I am going to try to provide alternatives to the more difficult words or phrases that we encounter. If you are an intermediate learner, I hope that this will help you understand what is being said more clearly. If you are an advanced learner, I hope that this will help you learn synonyms. Listen for phrases like "in other words" or "to say it differently" or "that is to say", which will introduce a different way to say what was said immediately before. Also listen for the word "or", which can quickly introduce or present another word choice for you.

Finally, I'd like to say a few general thoughts about songs and music and the kind of language we will be using in almost every episode!

As I'm sure you know from listening to songs in your native language, songs are full of bad grammar. It can be difficult to be grammatically correct when you're writing a song, and often it's not necessary to use correct grammar. That being said, I will try to point out when the grammar in a song is incorrect and offer a corrected version, so that you are not using weird or incorrect language.

I'd also like to quickly mention some song terms that we will be using in almost every episode.

When talking about the "lyrics", we're talking about the words that are spoken or sung during a song. Lyrics are only used when talking about songs, not poems. Generally speaking, lyrics are separated into "lines". Each "line" of a song is a single, unbroken segment or part of the song.

A "verse" is a series or collection of lines that are unique. Songs usually have 2 or 3 verses. Each verse, generally speaking, has a theme, that fits within the overall theme of the song. You can think of a verse as its own little story. Each verse has unique lyrics.

A "chorus" on the other hand, is the part of the song that repeats. The lyrics of the chorus are usually repeated after every verse. The chorus is the part of the song that you will remember the most easily. A good chorus is often described as "catchy". This means that it "catches" or "sticks" in your head. You can imagine that the song is now glued onto your brain. You won't forget it easily and you will probably be singing it everywhere you go. You might say to your friend, "This song has been stuck in my head since last week! I can't stop singing it!"

When we discuss songs, especially their meaning, we often say that we are "breaking down" a song. When you "break" something "down", you are reducing it to it's smallest parts. In this case, we are taking an entire song, and looking at the pieces that make up the song individually to help us understand. We are going to "break down" the lyrics into their smallest parts: phrases and words.

That's it! I hope that you will enjoy listening to this podcast! I am going to put a link to my email in the description, so please let me know if you have any thoughts, questions, critiques or song requests!