Learn English | How to talk about music and musicians

want to speak real english from your first lesson sign up for your free lifetime account at englishclass101.com hi everybody my name is alicia 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 r 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 that ends in an s here this is a plural noun we need to use are so this follows the same rules of grammar as 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 r 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 name or your band name you can also use this pattern like or 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 a band's new work for example have you heard musicians 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 or 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 musicians new song have you heard musicians 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 say 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 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 that's super popular you might feel this way or yeah it's okay so that's very neutral it's like i don't like it but i don't hate it either yeah it's okay 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 here 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 that'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 i'm going to the musician concert so why do we use the here because this the connects to the verb concert so there's maybe only one concert by this musician in your city

so we use the before this to mean that 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's only one 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 banned 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 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 where 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's amazing live

so instead of just lady gaga's 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 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 it sounds like i don't really like 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 hear 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 one i don't really like pop music idea two i don't listen to lady gaga we've 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's 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 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 please feel free to use these and put some

information in the comment section about musicians you like genres you like and dislike too of course if you have any questions or other comments please feel free to leave those in the comment section as well of course if you liked this lesson please don't forget to give it a thumbs up subscribe to our channel if you haven't already and check us out at english englishglass101.com for some other things that can help you with your english studies thanks very much for watching this lesson and i will see you again soon bye-bye want to speed up your

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