Do you think learning from songs is a good idea?

No, I think it’s largely a bad idea because songs (by and large, anyway) aren’t trying to communicate clearly, which is the goal of language and should be your goal. The intent of songs is to create art. It’s poetry set to a rhythm and music. Songwriters routinely use all sorts of poetic devices like metaphors and similes. They use words in ways that can deviate wildly from common understanding, sometimes uniquely so. They don’t use punctuation in any sort of normal way. They use words sometimes for no reason other than it sounded good, fit the rhythm, or resolved the melody. In short, for a learner (especially an early learner), song lyrics are often very confusing and can lead you to try to answer questions (like “What did the songwriter mean by this?”) that are often unanswerable by anyone other than the writer themselves. Music is awesome. Listen to it. But don’t use it for learning English.

Yes! It'll make you better at understanding fast-talking by teaching you some connected speech, besides increasing your vocabulary. The good thing about songs is that you can repeat them multiple times for the rest of your life, making you more acquainted to the sounds of the language on a daily basis. It's actually a method I use, I always pick songs that contain words i want to learn; It helps me to recall the word by the specific context. 

It depends on what you try to gain out of the learning in my opinion. From what i have heard from non native english learning English is that english slang is extremely hard to pick up compared to other languages so that aspect could be pretty beneficial imo

Depends, but mostly no. Songs don't use day to day English. They change syllables to fit the song. They use weird words that would sound extremely awkward in real speech, so it rhymes They don't use normal speaking rhythms Even natives have trouble with understanding the lyrics since they can sound bunched together to match the tempo Taking it as a challenge for fun, yes, but for learning, no

Don't use [this song.](https://youtu.be/mxtfdH3-TQ4?si=K2xy0F5kNwY2Ha7V) It's a fantastic song but many native English speakers have no idea what many of the words are

It might be. If you enjoy doing it, but I wouldn’t recommend limiting yourself only to songs.

I think it depends on the song. Some songs have abbreviated sentences that aren’t exactly grammatically correct, but you might hear it used by people in public. I would listen to The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and follow along with the lyrics on Google, the ones on Spotify are mostly wrong.

I want to add an import thing about songs and how words are pronounced. You will often run into something called [Melisma.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melisma) It’s basically where the singer takes one syllable and it gets repeated over more than one note. So you might have a word that’s spoken as 4 syllables but a singer might stretch that out so it sounds like it’s any number of syllables, anywhere from 5 to maybe 10 or more. I can imagine that this might make it very hard to both understand and to learn correct pronunciation for non native speakers.

Along with other methods, listening to songs can be a great idea. Eminem's grammar vocab is good, if a little fast. Adele and Beyonce are good too, though Rihanna and Niki Minaj not so much. Try lyricstraining.com for fun practice.

Song lyrics are poetry, and therefore deserve some place in language learning. Singing helps lyrics (and language) stick in the learner's mind. But the grammar of poetry is all over the place, so it's only one source. I'd try listening to BBC.

Listening to sings is great and will help you hear different words, however, learning English just by listening to songs is not a great choice. Why not have a tutor?

I think movies and podcasts would be way better

Not really

I like to study languages using children's songs. The texts are simpler and closer to spoken grammar standards than in average pop music; and the singers usually pronounce everything carefully. 

I think it's good to supplement your learning with things like music and movies since understanding cultures helps with understanding the language. But I wouldn't use song lyrics as a reference point for learning typical grammar or speech patterns.

It may not be the best option. Pronunciation is often different, they take creative liberties with grammar and rhyme, words can be hard to understand even for native speakers. I feel like we get questions here often asking what a song lyric means or why it's not by-the-book grammar.

No