When did foreign singers begin including English in their songs so much it became common?

by MaesterBarth

Japanese and Korean pop, European rap, etcetera. I don't mean artists like Shakira who recorded English versions of her songs in Spanish, but rather those who write songs primarily in their language with seemingly random verses in English.

dsk_oz

In regards to korea, english lyrics entered the scene when korean-americans did. Primarily they entered the scene as rappers within dance groups, so that would make it post-1995, because korean-americans were obviously more familiar with rapping.

For reference, rap as a stand alone or primary part of a "song" is a very recent thing. We'd be talking in the last few years. Typically group members were specialised along certain roles - main vocals, sub-vocals, rappers, and dancers. The current format of boy/girl groups that you might be familiar with is directly descended from the dance groups of the 90's.

Groups were built around main vocals and rappers were complementary, with the role of maintaining the energy of fast paced dance songs. From that perspective the lyrics didn't matter so there were quite a lot of instances of english lyrics being used. For example, dance group koyote's performance of one of their songs has a rapper, sub-vocal, and a main vocal singing in that order.

Historically, traditional music has fast paced rythmical speaking/chanting that's closely analogous to rapping. It's origins are obviously different from american rapping but rapping in korean songs followed the traditional music model more than it does the american rapping model (this is changing as I mentioned earlier).