He released the ballad, " Suddenly " as a single.

*" Oh My Darling, Clementine " ( 1884 ) is an American western folk ballad believed to have been based on another song called Down by the River Liv'd a Maiden ( 1863 ).

Don McLean's popular 1971 ballad " American Pie " is inspired by Holly and the day of the plane crash.

Illustration by Arthur Rackham of the ballad The Twa Corbies

Most northern and west European ballads are written in ballad stanzas or quatrains ( four-line stanzas ) of alternating lines of iambic ( an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable ) tetrameter ( eight syllables ) and iambic trimeter ( six syllables ), known as ballad meter.

Key work on the traditional ballad was undertaken in the late 19th century in Denmark by Svend Grundtvig and for England and Scotland by the Harvard professor Francis James Child.

The ballad was taken to Australia by early settlers from Britain and Ireland and gained particular foothold in the rural outback.

Musicologist Daniel Party defines this kind of ballad as a love song in slow tempo, interpreted by a solist, usually acompaigned by an orchestra.

Other key traditional pop and jazz ballads include: " Body and Soul " by Johnny Green ; " Misty " by Erroll Garner ; " The Man I Love " by George Gershwin ; " My Funny Valentine " by Rodgers and Hart, " God Bless the Child " by Billie Holiday, " Ev ' ry Time We Say Goodbye " by Cole Porter, the instrumental ballad " Naima " by John Coltrane, " In a Sentimental Mood " by Duke Ellington and " Always " by Irving Berlin.

Simon Frith identifies the origins of the power ballad in the emotional singing of soul artists, particularly Ray Charles and the adaptation of this style by figures such as Eric Burdon, Tom Jones and Joe Cocker to produce slow tempo songs often building to a loud and emotive chorus backed by drums, electric guitars and sometimes choirs.

" In 1977 the Commodores scored a ballad hit with " Easy ", which became the group's biggest hit yet, reaching No. 4 in the U. S., followed by the funky favorite " Brick House ", also Top 5, both from their landmark album " The Commodores ", as was the utopian album favorite " Zoom ".

She also returned to number one on the country charts later in 2005 by lending her distinctive harmonies to the Brad Paisley ballad, " When I Get Where I'm Goin '".

McLean's magnum opus, " American Pie ", is a sprawling, impressionistic ballad inspired partly by the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. Richardson ( The Big Bopper ) in a plane crash on 3 February 1959.

The proof that Homer does not belong to that school — and that his poetry is not in any true sense ballad poetry — is furnished by the higher artistic structure of his poems and, as regards style, by the fourth of the qualities distinguished by Arnold: the quality of nobleness.

Another particularly noteworthy track on the album is the ballad " Design For Living ," which featured guests Laurie Anderson, Gina Shock of The Go-Go's, Valerie Simpson of Ashford & Simpson, Tina Weymouth of Tom Tom Club and Talking Heads, Nancy Wilson of Heart, and former bandmate Patti LaBelle.

Anderson talks excitedly of Tears songs like the ballad Asylum, inspired by his father's struggle with depression, as having moved away from " Suede cliches or Brett Anderson cliches ... it's not, you know, opiated fop territory ".

Anderson recorded his biggest hit and signature song, the partly spoken ballad " Still ," in 1963, and it not only topped the country charts, but crossed over as well.

Kyle Anderson of MTV criticized its lyrics, deeming it as " another rejection ballad that references kissing but nothing else.

She sang him Scott's charming ballad `` Rosabelle '', which was the vogue of the moment.

The ballad probably derives its name from medieval French dance songs or " ballares " ( from which we also get ballet ), as did the alternative rival form that became the French Ballade.

In southern and eastern Europe, and in countries that derive their tradition from them, ballad structure differs significantly, like Spanish romanceros, which are octosyllabic and use consonance rather than rhyme.

A further development was the evolution of the blues ballad, which mixed the genre with Afro-American music.

" Alternatively, they might be folded to make small cheap books or " chapbooks " which often drew on ballad stories.

The most famous bush ballad is " Waltzing Matilda ", which has been called " the unofficial national anthem of Australia ".

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 and the United States in " ballad concerts.

An upright bassist auditioning for a blues band might be asked to play in a Swing-style walking bassline, a rockabilly-style " slapping " bassline ( in which the strings are percussively struck against the fingerboard ) and a 1950s ballad with long held notes.

The elf is occasionally portrayed in a positive light, such as the Queen of Elphame in the ballad Thomas the Rhymer, but many examples exist of elves of sinister character, frequently bent on rape and murder, as in the Tale of Childe Rowland, or the ballad Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight, in which the Elf-Knight bears away Isabel to murder her.

The ballad, " Lost Someone ", credited with the Famous Flames, became, along with " Please, Please, Please ", an early show-stopper to Brown's shows, while the recording of the Joe Tex composition, " Baby You're Right " ( to which Brown altered completely from the original ), increased his reputation with R & B audiences.

The only exceptions were ballad operas, such as John Gay's The Beggar's Opera ( 1728 ), musical burlesques, European operettas, and late Victorian era light operas, notably the Savoy Operas of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, all of which types of musical entertainments frequently spoofed operatic conventions.

The first single from Spellbound was the ballad, " Rush, Rush ," which topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for five consecutive weeks, and was noted for its music video and Rebel Without a Cause motif featuring Keanu Reeves in the James Dean role.

No extant ballad actually shows Robin Hood " giving to the poor ", although in a " A Gest of Robyn Hode " Robin does make a large loan to an unfortunate knight which he does not in the end require to be repaid ; and later in the same ballad Robin Hood states his intention of giving money to the next traveller to come down the road if he happens to be poor.

Any ballad may be older than the oldest copy which happens to survive, or descended from a lost older ballad.

Some ballads, such as Erlinton, feature Robin Hood in some variants, where the folk hero appears to be added to a ballad pre-existing him and in which he does not fit very well.

In the CBBC children's television show Horrible Histories, Richard III ( played by Jim Howick ) sings a power ballad in which he attempts to restore his reputation: "... Never had a hump and my arm was alright, never took the crown with illegal power.

Among them was the ballad " The First Cut is the Deepest " ( originally a Cat Stevens song ), which became her biggest radio hit since " All I Wanna Do.

It is a ballad from Act II in which the character Desirée reflects on the ironies and disappointments of her life.

The album spawned five hit singles: " It's Been Awhile " ( which hit the Billboard Top 10 ), " Fade " ( which has been featured on a number of movie soundtracks and television shows ), " Outside ", " For You ", and the acoustic ballad " Epiphany ".

Though versatile and capable of turning out a ballad lyric with the best of them, Mercer's forte is a highly polished quasi-folk wit.

But what is equally impressive is the delicacy and wonderful lyric quality of both the band and Mulligan's baritone sax in a fragile ballad like Bob Brookmeyer's arrangement of `` Django's Castle ''.

* Juan Maria Solare's piano ballad " Jura ser anomalía " ( literally " he / she swears to be an anomaly ") is an anagram of the composer's full name.

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music.

In the later 19th century it took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and the term is now often used as synonymous with any love song, particularly the pop or rock power ballad.

The earliest example we have of a recognisable ballad in form in England is ‘ Judas ’ in a 13th-century manuscript.

However, there is considerable variation on this pattern in almost every respect, including length, number of lines and rhyming scheme, making the strict definition of a ballad extremely difficult.

The Latin American romantic ballad is a genre on it self among other Latin American musical styles.

The most common use of the term ballad in modern pop music is for an emotional love song.

When the word ballad appears in the title of a song, as for example in The Beatles's " The Ballad of John and Yoko " or Billy Joel's " The Ballad of Billy the Kid ", the folk-music sense is generally implied.

" Ballad of the Green Berets " is a patriotic song in the ballad style about the Green Berets, an elite special force in the U. S. Army.

This version of the original ballad is sung to recruits who have successfully completed the harsh Basic Commando Training ( ECO ), and who receive their Green Beret.

Because variants proliferate naturally, it is naive to believe that there is such a thing as the single " authentic " version of a ballad such as " Barbara Allen ".

It is his noble and powerful style, sustained through every change of idea and subject, that finally separates Homer from all forms of ballad poetry and popular epic.

The song Far Away in Australia sung by the Irish ballad group The Wolfe Tones portrays the sorrow of two young Irish lovers who are separated when the male youth is forced to make his living far away in Australia, leaving his girl behind.