Italian Playlist

Studies have proven that music can help when it comes to learning, boosting your mood and helping you to form memories. But when it comes to learning languages, in particular, there’s another way that music can help—they’re direct exposure to your target language! In this blog post, we’ll be looking at music from Italy.

Why Is Music Helpful For Language Learning?
What To Do While You Listen
What Songs Are Best For Your Level?
uTalk’s Italian Playlist

Why Is Music Helpful For Language Learning?

Have you ever noticed that you can remember lyrics to a song that you haven’t heard in years, and that you need to sing the alphabet to remember the order? This is what makes music so great for learning new vocabulary and exposing yourself to a new language!

We’ve compiled a playlist of popular Italian songs ranging from the 1950s to the 1990s so you can immerse yourself in Italian musical culture. This will also prove to be useful when you go to an Italian village festival or even a local café where some of these songs are often played!

What To Do While You Listen

While you’re listening, have a read through the lyrics on TestiMania to discover new vocabulary and look out for any new grammar points that you’re not clear on. A lot of these songs cover similar themes, so you might notice that a word you learn from one song comes up in another! Plus, repeating the lyrics as you sing along can even help your pronunciation.

What Songs Are Best For Your Level?

For beginners, the best songs to start with are ‘Buonanotte Fiorellino’, which is more similar to a lullaby, and ‘Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu’, which uses lots of infinitives and has more simple vocabulary in comparison to some of the songs mentioned below.

If you are a beginner you might also want to start with a couple of these songs which are known abroad, such as ‘Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu’ by Domenico Modugno and ‘Tu Vuò Fà L’Americano’ by Renato Carosone (which is in Neapolitan).

Some of these artists like Fabrizio De André and Rino Gaetano are very well-known for their political and social messages in their songs, which may be harder for beginners to understand because of the use of metaphors and the preterite tense (‘passato remoto’ in Italian) which is never used in the North of Italy. Besides the frequent use in more poetic songs and written Italian and, the further South you travel the more this tense will be used.