When I was in the earlier stages of learning English, before I moved to the United States, finding easier ways to learn new words and phrases was pretty important. One of those ways was learning through music. When you hear a song you like, you can listen to it over and over again; at a certain point you start singing along; then before you know it you are ready to give it a go on your own. One of the most important things in this exercise is having the lyrics of the desired song. Fortunately, in this day and age lyrics are somewhat easy to find on the internet. With that in mind I decided to share some of my favorite songs with you and also give you some tips on how to look for Russian songs with lyrics on YouTube. I am not very big on Russian pop, so you will have to forgive me for lack of Russian pop references :-).

For example, here is what I put in to find one of my favorite songs (granted, I knew the name of the singer and the title but bear with me): Николай Носков это здорово текст

Here is another one of my favorites (no lyrics though) but this independent video was shot years later by a student just because she wanted too 🙂. Группа Секрет Привет

OK, maybe I will include one pop song, I do like it 🙂 This one is a remake of Алла Пугачева song which originally came out in 1978. Here is the original if you want to check it out.

If you are trying to find lyrics for the song, put in the words текст (lyrics) or текст песни (song lyrics) after you type in the name of the song you are interested in.

If you don’t know what to look for, you can try looking by genre. In this case you can first put in the genre and some key words and then try to narrow it down by song. Here are a few choices:

русский рок – Russian rock

русская поп – Russian pop

русский рэп – Russian rap

русский металл – Russian metal

русский панк – Russian punk

русские народные песни – Russian folk songs

русский романс — Russian romance, a very distinctive genre of Russian music

русские шансон – Russian chanson, a pretty interesting genre if you don’t mind trying new things 🙂

классическая музыка — classical music

лучшие (рок, рэп, поп, панк, и т.д.) группы России — best Russian (rock, rap, pop, punk, etc.) bands

русские песни – Russian songs

русская музыка – Russian songs

русские хиты – Russian hits

альтернативная музыка – alternative music

новые песни – new songs

хиты – hits

попса – pop (colloquial)

лучшее – best

60-е – 60s

70-е – 70s

80-е – 80s

90-е – 90s

You can also put in a specific year (2012, 2014, etc.) I know, I know, Mrs. Obvious is my middle name :-).

If you are trying to find the official video for the song, put in клип or видео after the title.

Most newer songs have pretty good videos.

Here are some more of my favorites. Perhaps, some of you might like them too.

Song: Oсень with lyrics Band: ДДТ

Song: Не вешать нос from the movie Гардемарины Вперед Sorry, no text

Song: «А на последок я скажу…» from the movie “Cruel Romance,” a very Russian song in so many ways. Sorry, no text.

I encourage everyone to share their favorite Russian songs in the comment section. I believe it might help some readers navigate the deep waters of Russian music and perhaps find something new and exciting 🙂

Всего хорошего!