- published: 08 Jun 2010
- views: 249674499
"Alejandro" is a song by American recording artist Lady Gaga. It was released as the third single from her third extended play (EP) and second major release The Fame Monster (2009). Co-written and produced by RedOne and inspired by her "Fear of Sex Monster", the lyrics portray Gaga bidding farewell to her lovers.
Musically, it is composed as a mid-tempo Europop song with an uplifting melody. Contemporary critics predominantly gave positive reviews for it and noted its heavy influence from pop groups like ABBA and Ace of Base. The song charted in the United Kingdom and Hungary due to digital sales following the album's release. Upon release, "Alejandro" charted again in the United Kingdom as well as in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United States while topping the Finnish, Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, and Romanian charts. "Alejandro" became Gaga's seventh successive single to reach the top-ten of the US Billboard Hot 100.
The accompanying music video was directed by fashion photographer Steven Klein and inspired by Gaga's love for her gay friends and admiration of gay love. Within the video, Gaga dances with a group of soldiers in a cabaret, interspersed with scenes of Gaga as a nun swallowing a rosary and near-naked men holding machine guns. The music video was controversial and received mixed to positive reviews. Critics complimented its idea and dark nature while the Catholic League criticized Gaga for appearing to use blasphemy despite Klein dismissing the idea and claiming that the scene in question (the swallowing of Rosary beads) was Gaga's "desire to take in the Holy". Gaga performed on the ninth season of American Idol and has performed on all dates of The Monster Ball Tour.
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing. A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs. The lyrics (words) of songs are typically of a poetic, rhyming nature, though they may be religious verses or free prose.
A song may be for a solo singer, a duet, trio, or larger ensemble involving more voices. Songs with more than one voice to a part are considered choral works. Songs can be broadly divided into many different forms, depending on the criteria used. One division is between "art songs", "pop songs", and "folk songs". Other common methods of classification are by purpose (sacred vs secular), by style (dance, ballad, Lied, etc.), or by time of origin (Renaissance, Contemporary, etc.).
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 vocal forms including opera and oratorio. However, the term is, "often found in various figurative and transferred sense (e.g. for the lyrical second subject of a sonata...)." The noun "song" has the same etymological root as the verb "to sing" and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the word to mean "that which is sung" or "a musical composition suggestive of song." The OED also defines the word to mean "a poem" or "the musical phrases uttered by some birds, whales, and insects, typically forming a recognizable and repeated sequence and used chiefly for territorial defence or for attracting mates."