In jazz and popular music, the term ballad denotes a short song in a slow tempo, usually with a romantic or sentimental text, though the term is also used for instrumental pieces. Ballad is also used in modern pop and folk music for a (usually faster) strophic narrative song, analogous to the older poetic term ballad. The latter usage is usually meant when the word ballad appears in the song's title.
The common modern usage of ballad may have evo...
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In jazz and popular music, the term ballad denotes a short song in a slow tempo, usually with a romantic or sentimental text, though the term is also used for instrumental pieces. Ballad is also used in modern pop and folk music for a (usually faster) strophic narrative song, analogous to the older poetic term ballad. The latter usage is usually meant when the word ballad appears in the song's title.
The common modern usage of ballad may have evolved from usage in 19th-century Britain. Ballads were generally sentimental, narrative, strophic songs published separately or as part of an opera (descendants perhaps of broadside ballads, but with printed music, and usually newly composed; see also ballad opera). These were sometimes called "drawing-room ballads" owing to their popularity with the middle classes. By the Victorian era ballad had come to mean any sentimental popular song, especially so-called "royalty ballads", which publishers would pay popular singers to perform in Britain...
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