A lullaby is a soothing song, usually sung to young children before they go to sleep, with the intention of speeding that process. As a result they are often simple and repetitive. Lullabies can be found in every culture and since the ancient period.

Typically a lullaby is in triple metre, or in a compound metre like 6/8. Tonally, most lullabies are simple, often merely alternating tonic and dominant harmonies: Because the intended effect is to put someone to sleep, wild chromaticism would be somewhat out of character.

Many Christmas carols are designed as lullabies for the infant Jesus, the most famous of them being "Silent Night".

In 1072, Turkish writer Mahmud al-Kashgari mentions old Turkish lullabies as 'balubalu' in his book Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk (Compendium of the languages of the Turks). It is also speculated the term may come from "Lilith-bye" or "Lilith-Abi" (Hebrew for "Lilith, begone"). In the Jewish tradition, Lilith was a demon who was believed to steal children's souls in the night. To guard against Lilith, Jewish people would hang four amulets on nursery walls with the inscription "Lilith – abi!" ["Lilith – begone"] which is a possible origin of the English word "lullaby".

The Cure are an English alternative rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976. The band has experienced several line-up changes, with frontman, vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Robert Smith being the only constant member. The Cure first began releasing music in the late 1970s with its debut album Three Imaginary Boys (1979); this, along with several early singles, placed the band as part of the post-punk and New Wave movements that had sprung up in the wake of the punk rock revolution in the United Kingdom. During the early 1980s, the band's increasingly dark and tormented music helped form the gothic rock genre.

After the release of Pornography (1982), the band's future was uncertain and Smith was keen to move past the gloomy reputation his band had acquired. With the 1982 single "Let's Go to Bed" Smith began to place a pop sensibility into the band's music (as well as a unique stage look). The Cure's popularity increased as the decade wore on, especially in the United States where the songs "Just Like Heaven", "Lovesong" and "Friday I'm in Love" entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart. By the start of the 1990s, The Cure were one of the most popular alternative rock bands in the world. The band is estimated to have sold 27 million albums as of 2004. The Cure have released thirteen studio albums, 10 EPs and over thirty singles during the course of their career. Since 2010, they have been working on a fourteenth studio album.

Johannes Brahms (pronounced [joːˈhanəs ˈbʁaːms]; 7 May 1833  – 3 April 1897) was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms's popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs.

Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works; he also worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many of his works and left some of them unpublished.

Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Baroque and Classical masters. He was a master of counterpoint, the complex and highly disciplined art for which Johann Sebastian Bach is famous, and also of development, a compositional ethos pioneered by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Brahms aimed to honour the "purity" of these venerable "German" structures and advance them into a Romantic idiom, in the process creating bold new approaches to harmony and melody. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.