Songs

Composition and Performance

A song is a short lyric written for singing. Consequently, the words (or lyrics) of the song must be adapted for singing: the language, sentence structure and arrangement of the text has to be in agreement with the tune.
Thus the words and the tune of a song interact in order to produce an overall impression, the mood the song intends to express.

Different moods:

Calm, thoughtful, melancholic, enchanting (bezaubernd), soothing, meditative, sad, aggressive, joyful, happy (heiter), humorous, exuberant (überschwänglich).

Other important elements contributing to the mood the song conveys are the rhythm and the singer's voice. A deep voice is likely to reinforce the thoughtful, melancholic or soothing mood of a song, whereas a high voice will tend to underline a song's aggressive or joyful expression.

Usually the rhythm, which produces a regular sound pattern, is in accordance with the mood of a song. There are a variety of rhythms to choose from: the evenly flowing, the simple, the monotonous, the lively, the oriental or the complicated rhythm. The tune may either urge on rapidly and with great force or run slowly, gently and smoothly in order to create a calm, meditative or sad effect.

The Lyrics

As a rule, songs have a regular stanzaic pattern. Similar to poems, they are divided into stanzas and often make use of end-rhyme and internal rhyme. Stanzas of equal length are followed by the refrain (or chorus = recurrent lines, especially at the end of each stanza; part of a song in which other singers join in) at intervals. Quite a number of song texts are concerned with current issues and problems in society.
Themes facing young people, such as loneliness, generation problems, and finding one's place in life, regularly occur in popular music.
A special kind of pop music that originated in the black ghettos of U.S. cities is rap. Rap music is rhythmically spoken, not sung, accompanied by a fast and powerful repetitive rhythm.