When was romantic music most popular

Right after she was signed to Columbia, Carey wrote her debut single with Ben Margulies. She described the composition as being not so much a love song as a celebration of her life at the time. Originally recorded as a Christmas song in Sweden in , this track was revised by Per Gessle when he was asked to update it for the "Pretty Woman" soundtrack.

Her first album was being mastered when Carey played a demo of this song for label president Don Ienner aboard a plane. Carey was told the song was a "career-maker" and despite her protests, the presses were stopped and the song was added to her debut release.

Barry and Robin Gibb wrote the song for Streisand but the former told Billboard he gives the artist most of the credit. Five years after he co-wrote Peggy March's No. Vicki Leandros performed the song, which placed fourth in the annual songfest.

Phil Spector was inspired to write the song by a photograph of his father's tombstone at Beth David Cemetery in New York. Freddie Mercury wrote the song while languishing in his bath at the Munich Hilton.

He leapt from the tub and ran to his guitar and piano to lay down the melody. His label was reluctant to release the song in the U. After viewing the film "Up Close and Personal," Diane Warren met with director Jon Avnet to talk about her vision of the song she was to compose for his movie. The next morning in her office, she recalls, "The chorus lyrically and musically wrote itself. The inspiration for the sentimental ballad was Scarsdale, N. Ryan Tedder and Jesse McCartney wrote the song, inspired by the latter's long-distance romance with his girlfriend.

McCartney wanted the song for himself but his label was unenthusiastic so it went to the winner of the third season of "The X Factor" in the U. Back in , Don Gibson wrote two songs one hot afternoon in Knoxville, Tenn. When the Stax label folded, the three Hutchinson sisters had to find a new home. Songwriter Warren Allen Brooks says his No. Mario didn't realize this song was going to be so huge.

Houston's signature song was originally a No. Her version topped the Hot Country Songs chart in and again in What could be more romantic than finding love in a "hopeless place"? They weren't even certain that there was a love scene in the film. They intended the song for Yvonne Elliman, but their manager Robert Stigwood insisted they record it themselves. Producer Jon Peters and director Franco Zeffirelli asked Lionel Richie to compose an instrumental along the lines of the theme from "Love Story" for their movie starring Brooke Shields.

When Zeffirelli changed his mind and asked Richie if he would add lyrics, the Motown star agreed to write some. Then Zeffirelli made one more request — to add a female singer, someone like Diana Ross. Search term. Billboard Pro Subscribe Sign In. Top Artists. Top Charts. Hot Songs. This soulful single from Al Green is arguably one of the most sensual songs of all time.

And one that's undoubtedly about to get stuck in your head. Ever been so in love you never want to leave your partner's side? Well said, Dan. Or should we say—well sung. Percy Sledge was the first to sing this iconic love song in the '60s, later re-recorded in the '80s and '90s by the likes of Bette Midler and Michael Bolton , respectively.

The song tells of the extreme lengths a man will go for the woman he loves. As he should. Ol' Blue Eyes wasn't the first to sing this hit which was initially recorded by Cole Porter in , but the combination of Frank Sinatra 's devil-may-care approach to the lyrics and perfect bluesy sound make it feel as if the tune had been written just for him. It's music at its finest, at the hands of one of the most romantic crooners the world has ever seen. Warning: If you've never heard this song by Peter Gabriel before, it'll likely bring you to tears.

Between the artist's raw vocals and lyrics like, "I love it when you sing to me, and you can sing me anything," you're bound to feel things. Just don't text your ex! The early '00s brought us a lot of memorable romantic songs, but one of the biggest gems was quite possibly this hit from American rock band, Train. The song was hardly a romantic one-off for the group remember "Marry Me"?

Or at least the most-requested at karaoke. It's impossible not to fall in love with Vanessa Carlton 's breakout hit, "A Thousand Miles," after just one listen. The song is beyond charming, just the like singer, songwriter, and musician herself.

This hit from country new kid Devin Dawson is romantic in its uniqueness. In the song, the artist calls for a partnership where not just the good stuff is shared, but the bad and the ugly, too. Now that's a relationship we can really get behind.

Nothing screams romance quite like Leon Bridges. His signature yet familiar sound plays beautifully into this song's heartfelt lyrics, making it a true standout on the artist's sophomore album. If that doesn't scream "romance," we don't know what will. When Christina Perri burst onto the scene in the early s, the world took notice, thanks not only to her signature look but also to her uncanny ability to belt out a ballad.

If romance had a theme song, it would be this hit by Bruno Mars. Between the singer's smooth sound, its signature catchy beat, and those melt-your-heart lyrics, this tune has "Valentine's Day" written all over it. This late-'90s hit by Donna Lewis doubles as both a romantic track and a get-up-and-dance anthem for a night out with your best friend.

Either way, it's a win. The Supremes reigned, well, supreme in the land of romantic doo-wop hits, and "Baby Love" is no exception. Coldplay is to emotional music as peanut butter is to jelly, and in "Us Against the World," from the band's fifth studio album Mylo Xyloto, Chris Martin and his bandmates pull at the listeners' heartstrings with the marriage of various instrumental solos and wholly beguiling lyrics.

Ingrid Michaelson is charming beyond words, and in her hit "The Way I Am," a romantic tune that arguably put the singer on the map, she truly delivers.

But this song feels somehow different from the artist's love songs of years past. Perhaps it's the singer's raw vocals and stylistically unfiltered approach that make this hit feel special. Regardless, it's an honest romantic delivery from the singer that can't be overlooked.

Nor did composers feel constrained to limit a work's exploration of different keys, as evidenced in Mahler's Symphony No. In addition to breaking existing rules, Romantic composers also developed new techniques or reinvigorated lesser used ones to express a more extensive array of emotional and narrative states. They used more extended melodies, broader ranges of tone, pitch, and tempo — more sophisticated harmonies. Some key innovations from the Romantic Era include:.

Romantic composers took advantage of a variety of mechanical innovations to explore richer dynamics and tones. Specifically, improvements in instrumental construction, as well as the creation of new instruments. The broader range and improvement of instruments allowed Romantic composers to express more precise gradations of volume and tone. This included longer, soaring crescendos and diminuendos. It also allowed them to make greater jumps in tone and volume, creating a new sort of discordance.

The piano significantly evolved during the Romantic Period. For example, the number of physical keys expanded from five to eight octaves. The materials used to construct piano frames shifted from wood to metal, and the durability of the metal used to manufacture its strings improved.

These improvements enriched the pitch range and tonal quality of the piano. Similarly, the materials used to construct woodwind instruments also improved and expanded their musical quality and variability. Innovations, such as developing the valve for brass instruments, also contributed to a more abundant variety of sounds. As did the invention of entirely new instruments, like the Wagner tuba. However, one of the most significant changes to instrumentation during the Romantic Era wasn't the nature of the instruments individually, but changes in the instrumentation of the works.

A critical means of expanding the expressiveness of the music — primarily through tonal color, broader dynamics, and richer harmonies — was by increasing the number of instruments required to perform the composition. An extreme example of this is Mahler's Symphony No.

Orchestras from the Classical Era typically had around 30 musicians. The orchestra continued to grow and evolve throughout the Romantic Period, settling into the orchestra we know today. As alluded to above, the wind and brass sections grew through the addition of a variety of instruments, such as the piccolo and contrabassoon, both of which greatly expanded the tonal range of the music. The percussion section also saw numerous instruments added, from bass drums to the triangle.

The string section also expanded. It remained comprised of the same four instruments: violin, viola, cello, and double bass. However, the number of each string instrument increased. Enlargin the number of strings allowed for the creation of more subsets within the string section. Romantic composers would use different configurations of small groups of strings to deepen the texture and contrasts within a work.

Another orchestral innovation of the period was intermittent use of non-traditional instruments. Say, cannons needed for Tchaikovsky's Overture as one extreme example. An expanded orchestra was needed to perform the longer, more dramatic symphonies from the Romantic Era.

While the symphony exploded to new intensity during this time, the period is also notable for composers creating a variety of types of "miniature" works. We've seen that formal Classical structures, such as composing symphonies with only four movements, were set aside by Romantic composers. They also composed single-movement works in a variety of distinct forms:. Another important sub-genre of Romantic composition was intended to tell a specific story or paint a particular scene — program music, which may be a single movement or may have multiple movements.

Program music is music that tells a discrete story. It could be a story from the composer's life or his imagination. Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique: An Episode in the life of an Artist, in Five Parts , was the detailed recounting of the composer's unrequited love for a famous actress of the day.

Each movement is named:. As you can tell from the names of the movements, the arc of this story doesn't go well for the artist. Berlioz handed out programs at the performances to explain the story.

In other cases, the story was taken from literature, mythology, or local folklore. The assumption of program music is that it must have program notes to share with the audience and explain the work. That may have been true when it first gained its greatest popularity during the Romantic Period, but handing out notes isn't the defining characteristic of program music.

In part because program music didn't have to tell a narrative story, but could be used to evoke the spirit of a time or place. The symphonic or tone poem, a popular form of program music from the Romantic era, was intended to paint a scene where it transports the listener, which may or may not be a narrative story. For example, Sibelius composed numerous tone poems from old Finnish mythology, but composed others meant to invoke the spirit of his country and inspire patriotism, such as Finlandia.

Thus, Romantic Era tone poems run the full gamut of Romantic Era inspiration, from sharing intense emotional journeys, re-telling stories from Greek mythology or European literature, exploring fantastical settings both natural and supernatural , and as odes to a country or culture. Sibelius's Finlandia is an example of overt nationalism in Romantic music. In some cases, the work wasn't meant as a patriotic song per se but explicitly drew on folk music traditions the composer wanted to highlight.

During the Classical Era, which prioritized the universality of strict, logical forms including strains of folk songs in music composed for nobles, would have been seen as provincial — at best. However, the self-expression popular during the Romantic Period often came out as patriotic love for local traditions during a time of war.

Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies exemplify this approach.