The blues is a slow sad style of music built on a repeating twelve-bar pattern. Play the blues, a blues singer, twelve-bar blues.
It grew out of African American work songs and spirituals in the American South around 1900 and is the root of rock, soul and much of jazz. The twelve-bar structure and the flattened blue notes are its signature. As an ordinary noun, the blues means low spirits: have the blues, the Monday blues. Note bluesy, and that the form takes a singular verb — the blues is a music of repetition.
1nounbluesA slow sad musical style built on a twelve-bar pattern.
“The old man played the blues on his guitar outside the station.”
2nounlowLow spirits.
“He had the blues for about a fortnight in January.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
blues is a music style, or low spirits.