When English popular music from the United States and England began to find its way into overseas markets — particularly into the emerging markets of a Europe that was reconstructing from World War II — the songs were often translated into local languages to appeal to the European market. This impulse to localise English popular music by translating it into other languages promoted linguistic creativity and even the development of ‘mock languages’ that would imitate English. Increasingly, however, the impulse to localise English popular music, especially through translation, has been replaced by an impulse to globalise English in popular music. One consequence of this impulse is the permutation of English into popular music in other languages or even the replacement of other languages with English as the preferred language of popular music. A second consequence of the impulse to globalise is the reduction of linguistic complexity in much of English popular music. While both impulses currently operate in popular music culture, globalisation has come to dominate where transnationalism was once the norm.