A singer is a type of musician who uses his or her voice to produce music. Usually, singing refers to vocal melody only, though vocalist is a similar term which also encompasses non-melodic sounds and effectively includes anyone using their voice as part of a musical composition, including spoken word, Death grunt, and rapping.

A lead singer (in barbershop music simply called a lead) is one who sings the primary vocals of a song, as opposed to a backing singer who sings backup vocal(s) to a song or harmonies to the lead singer. An exception is in five-part gospel a cappella music, where the lead is the highest of the five voices and sings a descant, never the melody which may be in any of the other four parts.