During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, there was an organization to collect local ballads, sort out and make music scores, which was called Yuefu. Later, people called the poems collected and composed by this institution Yuefu Poetry, or simply Yuefu Poetry. By the Tang Dynasty, although the music scores of these poems had long been lost, this form followed suit and became a poetic genre with no strict meter and close to five or seven words.
In writing Yuefu poems, some poets in the Tang Dynasty used the old Yuefu poems to write current events to express their feelings.