ENGLISH FOR A SONG: An App for Music & Learning National surveys estimate that more than 80 million American adults, including millions of recent immigrants, struggle to read and write English competently. A huge proportion of all these low‐literate adults, who may have difficulty reading a medicine label, filling out a job application, and helping their children with their homework, are hard‐working people who struggle daily, in many different ways, to strengthen their English skills in pursuit of higher education, improved economic status, and fuller participation in American society for themselves and their children. The majority has neither the time, nor the opportunity, to attend formal literacy programs in their community. In response to this urgent need to boost national levels of English literacy, the Barbara Bush Foundation, through the XPRIZE organization, will award a multi‐million dollar prize to the team that develops a mobile app that helps Americans, 18 and up, strengthen their listening, reading, and writing skills in measurable ways. The tool we propose to create is English for a Song, an interactive literacy resource that marries classic and modern hit songs with easily accessible, high‐quality and highly‐visual learning activities. The concept for the English for a Song app derives from a wealth of studies that point to the effectiveness of learning the structures of language through music and lyrics. English for a Song turns famous hits like Shakira’s Can’t Remember to Forget You or Taylor Swift’s Everything Has Changed into personalized, in‐depth English lessons that can be accessed, free of charge, at the learner’s convenience. Once tuned in to great songs like these—and other catchy tunes by popular artists —learners can be guided to go beyond the words to explore elements of English grammar, spelling, and punctuation, to expand their vocabulary, to gauge their understanding of the lyrics—even to write their own—and much more.