In music,a Song is a composition that contains vocal parts (lyric) that are performed (sung),a commonly accompanied by musical instruments,exception in the case of a cappella songs. The lyrics of songs are typically of a poetry,rhyming nature,although they may be religious verses or free prose. Songs are typically for a solo singer,though they may also be in the form of a duet,trio or larger ensemble involving more voices. Songs can be broadly divided into many different forms depending on the criteria used. One division is between "art song" , "pop song" and "folk song". Other common methods of classification are by purpose (sacred vs secular) by style (dance,ballad).

A song is a piece of music for accompanied or unaccompanied voice or voices or, "the act or art of

singing," but the term is generally not used for large vocals form including opera and oratario.

However,the term is "often found in various figurative and transferred sense (e.g. for the lyrical second subject of a sonata. The word "song" has the same etymological root as the verb "to sing" and the OED defines the word to mean "that which is sung" .

CULTURAL TYPES !

ART SONGS ~

• Art songs are created for performance in their own right,usually with piano accompaniment,although they can also have other types of accompaniment such as an orchestra or string quartet,and are always notated. Generally they have an identified authors and composer and require voice training for acceptable performances. The lyrics are often written by a poet or lyricist and the music separately by a composer. Art songs may be more formally complicated than popular or folk songs. Often romantic art songs sharing similar elements were grouped as a song cycle.

FOLK SONGS ~

• Folk songs are songs of often anonymous origin (or are public domain) that are transmitted orally. They are frequently a major aspect of national or cultural identity. Art songs are often approach the status of folk song when people forget who the author was. Folk songs are also frequently transmitted non-orally (that is,as sheet music),especially in the modern era. Folk songs exist in almost every,if not all,cultures.

POPULAR SONGS ~

• Modern popular songs are typically distributed as recordings,and are played on the radio,though all other mass media that have audio capabilities are involved. Their relative popularity is inferred from commercially significant sales of recordings,ratings of stations and networks that play them,and tickets sales for concerts by the recording artists. A popular song can become a modern folk song when members of the publics who learn to sing it from the recorded version teach their version to others. Popular songs may be call pop songs for short,although pop songs or pop music may instead be considered a more commercially popular genre of popular music as a whole. Many people consider songs in popular music to have in general simpler structures than art songs,however,musicologists who are,"both contemptuous and condescending[of popular music] are looking for types of production,musical form,and listening which they associate with a different kind of music...classical music and thus they generally find popular music lacking.

SAMPLE COMPILATION OF SONGS !!!

credit to :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song