Listening to music is a fun and easy way to passively acquire new vocabulary but it can be difficult to find quality playlists through all the clutter. Here are some of our go-to Arabic music playlists ranging in genre from classics to pop to indie.

Istanna Shwai is a classic by the Jordanian alternative rock group, Autostrad. It’s a fun, jazzy song with creative examples of common Levantine Arabic words and phrasing.

Khalini Bil Jaw is a lovely and melancholic song by Maya Nasri, covered more recently by Nina Abdel Malak. The lyrics feature a lot of excellent vocabulary and colloquial Arabic phrases. Listen to the song, read the translation, and review key vocabulary.

Lyrics and English translation of Kona Momken Netefeq, a slightly sad electronic pop song that includes many examples of the conditional tense in colloquial Arabic. While you’re bopping along to the tune, notice how the لو phrase sets up the structure for the following lines.

Law is a song about desires and regrets from the point of view of a woman who has had an affair. She reflects on the ordeal and what led up to it, providing many examples of conditional phrases. It’s also the theme song to a moselsel of the same name.

Dance your way into the summer and prevent the spread of coronavirus with this upbeat song by Mohamed Ramadan. You can even brush up on your Arabic medical vocabulary while singing along.

The Syrian Cassette Archives is a growing digital time capsule from the “cassette era” across Syria. Audio recordings cover many genres, towns, and communities in Syria from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Most of the music is in Arabic and all of it is available to listen to for free!

This song provides many examples of ways to use the Arabic word من. And the video features Aziz Maraka playing a tiny guitar :)

Khaberni Keef by Khansa is a complex and poetic love song. The lyrics are full of creative vocabulary and examples of Arabic verbs in the command form.

Haollak Eih by Moustafa Amar is a fun throwback to the early 2000s. The repetitive lyrics and the catchiness of this song makes it a useful tune for learning new vocabulary.

Tayheen is a Levantine Arabic indie rock song with a lot going on sonically - strong drums and electric guitar, some brass, and rich vocals from lead singer, Yasmina Abu Naser. Now it also has an English translation!

We’re going back this week to listen to Shim el Yasmine, one of Lebanese indie band Mashrou’ Leila’s first songs. Released in 2009 on their self-titled studio album, Shim El Yasmine is an intimate love song about one of lead singer Hamed Sinno’s first relationships.

Habaytak Bisayf is one of many songs by Fairouz, one of the region’s most popular voices. The relatively basic vocabulary of the lyrics make the song easy to follow, even for beginning Arabic learners.

A slightly nonsensical song with a lot of phrases in the conditional tense, a form that can be difficult to grasp when learning a language.

Emta Njawzak Yamma is an energetic rap by the Palestinian band DAM. They discuss the struggles of young adulthood and pushing back against societal pressures to settle down. The lyrics are slang-heavy with a lot of good examples of colloquial Arabic grammar.

3abali is a nostalgic song about childhood and how things used to be. The lyrics are a good refresher for how to say the months and excellent resource to study past continuous structure in Arabic.

Ya Badr by Dina Elwedidi and DJ Totti is an upbeat and emotional song about love and loss. It starts off with a traditional, strong, vocal mawwal that morphs into a faster, more electronic beat later in the song.

This song commiserates over the age-old phenomenon of being afraid to commit in a relationship.

For the first time, we are doing an original song translation from Fusha to English! Some of you may recognize this melancholy tune from the Netflix show AlRawabi School for Girls.

As an energetic song of love, betrayal, and anger, Majnoon makes for a great pump-up song. Or a good soundtrack to angrily simmer to. We’ve included the full Arabic lyrics and our English translation in this post.