Shlager (German Schlager) is a style of popular music that is prevalent in northern Europe, in particular Germany and Scandinavia, but also to a lesser extent in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. It is characterised by sweet, overly sentimental ballads, usually sung by a female vocalist, usually with a simple and memorable melody. During the Second World War, the Nazi Germany Government tightly controlled the creation of music but even due to this, the genre managed to do very well. The style is frequently represented at the Eurovision Song Contest, and has been popular since the 1950s. While at one time music of this style was also fairly popular in the UK and USA, Due to the constant change in music favour and complexity of the music of today such as the Electronic Music and Hip-Hop genres commonly heard by the 18-30 crowd in recent years as Shlager had been in its time. Shlager is considered to be musically very old fashioned and overly simple. Because of this it is now rarely heard in those countries.
