Random Idea English: Songs

Songs

Song lessons


Kate Nash	Nicest Thing	Practise I wish
Michelle Shocked	Anchorage	Basic practice with Past simple
Mighty Sparrow	Prince Philip My Dear	Vocabulary exercises
Van Morrison	Brown Eyed Girl	Short exercise
Human League	Don't You Want Me	Prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs
Bob Dylan	It's All Over Now Baby Blue	Song vocabulary, relative clauses
West Side Story	America	Song vocabulary
Nancy Sinatra	These Boots Are Made For Walking	Exercise with the verb mess

Johnny Cash	A Boy Named Sue	Exercises with mean and would
Jim Croce	Time in a Bottle	Exercise with Second Conditional
Joan Osborne	One of us	Exercise with Second Conditionals
Beyoncé	If I were a boy	Conditionals

The Offspring	She's got issues	Vocabulary, questions with if and I wish

Discussions related to songs

Judas Priest	You've got another thing coming	How an idiom has changed
Joan Osborne	One of us	Conditionals and no Subjunctive
Snow Patrol	Chasing Cars	Did they get it right?

Exercises based on several songs

Conditionals in songs

Songs for teaching various grammar points in TEFL and ESL

This list has been compiled from a lot of sources on the web, mainly by googling around. Thanks to everyone who makes their resources public. Click on 'G' to go straight into a Google search. This should bring up videos, lyrics, Wikipedia etc in one handy list.

I've also added a list of links to song collections, and other teachers' ideas about how to use songs for ESL, TEFL etc

I'll gradually add other grammar functions to this list as time allows.

List of songs using conditionals

Zero conditional

Yvonne Elliman

If I Can't Have You

I think this is stretching it a bit, but there's not a hell of a lot of songs about water boiling at 100 degrees centigrade

First conditional

Beatles	Can't buy me love	G
Cat Stevens	Moonshadow
Chicago	If You Leave Me Now	G
Eminem	If I get Locked up Tonight	G
Leonard Cohen	I'm your man	G
Manic Street Preachers	If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next	G
Pixies	Hey	G
Rod Stewart	I don't want to talk about it	G
Simply Red	If You Don't Know Me by Now	G
Tom Jones	If You Go Away	G
Tracy Chapman	The promise	G

First and second

Lesley Gore	It's my party	G
Beatles	She's leaving home	G

Second conditional

Abba	Money money money	G
Bare Naked Ladies	If I had a million dollars	G
Beach Boys	Wouldn't it be nice	G
Bellamy Brothers	If I said you had a beautiful body	G
Beyoncé	If I Were a Boy	G
Bon Jovi	I’d Die For You	G
Cher	If I could turn back time	G
Eric Clapton	Tears in Heaven	G
Fiddler on the roof	If I were a rich man	G
Frank Sinatra	The Sunny Side of the Street	G
Pete Seeger	If I had a hammer	G
Joan Osborne	One of us	G
Jim Croce	Time in a bottle	G
Jennifer Lopez	If you had my love	G
Katie Mehlua	If you were a sailboat	G
Madonna	Holiday	G
Silencers	Wild Mountain Thyme	G
Simon and Garfunkel	El Condor pasa	G
Steven Seagal	Girl It's Alright	G

Third conditional

Brian McKnight	Coulda, shoulda, woulda	G
Gracie Fields	If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked a cake	G
Rednex	Cotton-Eye Joe	G

Mixed Conditionals

Here's hopin'

I wish

Kate Nash	Nicest thing	G
Box Car Racer	I feel so	G

Would

Dusty Springfield	Son of a Preacher Man - past habit	G
Johnny Cash	A boy named Sue - past habit, will in the past, 'd - had or would	G
Oliver (the musical)	I'd do anything - hidden conditional (if you loved me?)	G

Tenses

Police	Can't stand losing you	G
Stevie Wonder	Lately - (Perfects and continuous tenses)	G
ABBA	The winner takes it all	G
Human League	Don't you want me baby	G

Present continuous

Fool's Garden	Lemon Tree	G
Suzanne Vega	Tom's Diner	G

Relative Clauses and nominal relative clauses

Natalie Imbruglia

Torn

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