How to learn German with songs: one song a week, line by line

To learn German with songs, work on one song at a time instead of leaving a playlist on. Pick a slow song with a repeating chorus and fewer than about 70 different words. Listen once without lyrics, read the translation line by line, loop the lines you can't catch, then sing along with the German on screen. Save five to ten words with the line they came from, and come back to the song two or three more times that week.

The rest of this post is how to do each step, which songs to start with, and the parts of German grammar songs are unusually good at teaching.

Why songs work, and what they won't do

Repetition does most of the work. In a 2019 study by Pavia, Webb and Faez, learners heard the same song one, three or five times. They picked up some words from listening alone, and more listens taught more words.

Singing also beats listening. In a 2014 study by Ludke, Ferreira and Overy, adults who learned Hungarian phrases by singing them did better at recalling and saying the phrases than adults who spoke them. That was 15 minutes in a lab, not a course, so read it as "sing along", not "singing makes you fluent".

Songs won't teach you to hold a conversation. Lyrics bend word order to fit the music, and most of them are about love going wrong. Use songs to train your ear and to collect words that stick, and practise speaking somewhere else.

Pick a song you can mostly follow

If you want one song to start with, take "Du bist anders" by AnnenMayKantereit. It's slow, it repeats, and its 55 different words are an argument between two people in plain sentences. Beyond that one, look for:

• Few different words. The easiest songs on our beginner list use 31 to 66 different words. "99 Luftballons", which everyone suggests, uses 122.
• A slow or medium tempo, so you can hear where one word ends. German runs consonants together, and fast songs blur them.
• A chorus that repeats. Every repeat is a free review.
• Standard German. Swiss German and strong regional dialects sound very different from what a course teaches. Save them for later.
• A song you like, because you'll hear it ten times this week.

A quick test: read the first verse before you press play. If you can guess most lines with the translation beside you, it's your level. If you're lost by line two, pick something easier. Our list of 12 German songs for beginners, easiest first is a good place to start.

The routine, step by step

The first session with a new song takes 20 to 30 minutes. Later ones take ten.

1. Listen once with nothing on screen. Note which words you catch. You'll compare against this at the end.

2. Read the translation line by line. German on one side, English on the other, one line at a time. For each line, match the German words to the English ones. Where they don't line up, you've usually found the grammar point, most often a verb that has moved to the end.

3. Listen with the German lyrics. Read along. When a line goes past too fast, pause, replay it two or three times, and find the words that ran together. In German that's often a dropped ending: ich hab' for ich habe, frag' for frage, 'ne for eine.

4. Sing along, out loud. Start with the chorus. If a line is too fast, speak it slowly first, then try it with the music. This is the step that trains sounds like ü and ch, because you're copying a native speaker at full speed.

5. Save five to ten words. Save nouns with their article (das Herz, die Seele, der Moment), because you'll need the gender every time you use them. Keep the full lyric line too: the line shows you how the word is used, and you'll hear the tune when you review it.

6. Listen once more, no lyrics. Compare with step 1. Lines that were noise twenty minutes ago should now be words.

What songs teach about German grammar

Songs repeat a pattern so often that you pick it up before you learn the rule. These are the ones that catch English speakers.

The verb goes to the end. After a modal verb like will or a word like dass, the main verb waits until the end of the clause. Rammstein's "Ich will" is nothing but that: Ich will eure Stimmen hören, "I want to hear your voices", and Ich will, dass ihr mir vertraut, "I want you to trust me". After twenty repeats, putting hören last feels normal.

Separable verbs split in two. The second line of AnnenMayKantereit's "Du bist anders" is Du hörst mir nicht zu, "You don't listen to me". The verb is zuhören, and in a normal sentence the zu breaks off and goes to the end. Look up hörst alone and you get "hear", which is close but wrong. Step 2 is where you catch this.

Relative clauses. In "Jenny Jenny", also by AnnenMayKantereit, der Kaffee, den sie jeden Morgen trinkt means "the coffee she drinks every morning". German needs the den that English drops, and trinkt goes last. Hear it in a song and you have a template for every "the thing that..." sentence.

How often, and when to move on

Spread the sessions out. A 2006 review of spacing research by Cepeda and colleagues pooled 317 experiments and found that spreading out study sessions helps you remember, and that the best gap grows the longer you want to remember something. For one song:

• Day 1: the full routine.
• Day 2: steps 3 and 4, then quiz yourself on your saved words.
• Day 4 or 5: sing it without lyrics on screen, then check the lines you got wrong.
• Day 7 to 10: one listen and a word review.

Start the next song around day 5, so you always have one new song and one or two in review. Move on when you can follow a song without the lyrics, even if you can't sing every word.

Mistakes that waste the most time

Starting with German rap. It's fast and full of slang, and half the fun is wordplay you can't hear yet. Come back to it after a dozen easier songs.

Choosing a song only because it's famous. "99 Luftballons" is a great song with roughly twice as many different words as the easiest ones, plus war ministers and fighter squadrons. Learn its first verse, then come back to the rest.

Saving nouns without their article. Herz on its own teaches you half a word. Save das Herz.

Copying song word order into speech. Songwriters move words around to fit the rhythm. If a line's word order looks odd, check whether people actually say it that way before you use it.

Leaving it in the background. A song you've never read the translation of teaches very little while you work. Play songs you've already studied in the background instead; that's free review.

Looking for more songs once you've done the beginner list? We also keep a longer list of German songs by genre.