Power ballad

To emphasize the emotional aspect of a power ballad, crowds customarily hold up lit lighters.

Power ballad is a song genre frequently included on arena rock, hard rock and heavy metal albums in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s; the style has evolved into more modern forms since.

Power ballads are usually not so much ballads as love songs. They often explore sentimental themes such as yearning and need, love and loss. Their usually confessional nature differ from metal's more lyrical themes of hedonism, violence, or the occult. Record companies probably wanted a more accessible and appealing name than metal love songs. Power ballads were immediately marketable to the public and ready for radio airplay.

Format

Typically, a power ballad begins with a soft keyboard or acoustic guitar introduction. Heavy drums and distorted electric guitars don't enter into the arrangement until the chorus or even later in the song. The electric guitar parts usually take the form of simple root/fifth power chords which sustain until the next chord change, but screaming, melodic guitar solos are also important markers of this genre. The interplay throughout the arrangement between "clean" timbres and distorted ones is crucial to the creation of emotional tension in the power ballad aesthetic.

History

Power ballads initially came into popularity at the insistence of a record company in hope of scoring a Top Forty hit, and in the genre's formative years were written only grudgingly by band members. However in recent years, power ballads have been re-imagined (as has much of 1980s culture) as something "authentic" rather than something "manufactured" (i.e. pushed onto bands by record labels). In any event, power ballads were often a band's most (or only) commercially successful songs. Because of the perceived superficiality of their sentiment, though, power ballads were consistently despised by music critics, who rejected the way metal musicians actively borrowed the musical codes normally reserved for more "authentic" styles of rock.

An important precursor for the form was The Carpenters' "Goodbye to Love" single in 1972, which featured a fuzz-tone screaming guitar solo (by Tony Peluso) situated next to a "middle of the road" vocal.

Power ballads originated in the 1970s with Power pop band the Raspberries and arena rock bands like Styx, Boston, REO Speedwagon, Journey, Def Leppard and heavy metal pioneers Scorpions. Early examples of power ballads are "Don't Wanna Say Goodbye" from the Raspberries' debut album in 1972, The Raspberries, Styx's "Lady" from their 1973 album Styx II. As a solo artist, Raspberries lead singer and chief songwriter Eric Carmen continued to contribute to the genre by creating the #2 hit "All By Myself" in 1976, which was subsequently covered by artists such as Shirley Bassey, Celine Dion, and Il Divo.

In the 1980's, hard rock and heavy metal bands began to climb the Billboard charts with power ballads, while MTV rotation fueled their popularity. Scorpions' "Still Loving You" and Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" both charted in 1984, and Dokken's "Alone Again" did in 1985.

By the mid 1980s, the rise in popularity of the power ballad was signified with MTV's most requested video for four months straight, "Home Sweet Home" by Mötley Crüe, released in 1985 on the Theatre of Pain album. Many consider this the defining power ballad of the 1980s.

In the pop metal and glam metal genres, later developments of the style from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s are exemplified by such hits as "Sweet Child O' Mine", "November Rain", "Estranged", and "Don't Cry" by Guns N' Roses, Bon Jovi's "I'll Be There for You", Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn", Warrant's "Heaven" and Skid Row's "I Remember You". For some 1970s arena rock artists, the power ballad was also responsible for helping to revive their careers in the 1980s; examples include Heart's "These Dreams" and Cheap Trick's "The Flame". After the release of Van Halen's "When It's Love", the term power ballad started to decline in use.

Present use

The term power ballad is still used to this day in reference to songs such as Lifehouse's "Hanging by a Moment", "Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", Matchbox Twenty's "Push", Velvet Revolver's "Fall to Pieces", The Calling's "Wherever You Will Go" and other such works.

Occasionally, the term is applied more generally to rock songs which start slowly and quietly and then gradually crescendo to a powerful, climactic end. This usage is far less common, however, and seems to be a retroactive application of the genre's name to pre-1980s album-oriented rock songs such as Queen's "We Are the Champions", Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", Aerosmith's "Dream On", Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird", as well as to 1990s songs like Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters", all of which vaguely fit the power ballad aesthetic but do not exhibit the sentimentality associated with 1980s power ballads. Generally a power (or rock) ballad is considered suitable for slow dancing because of its slow beat.

As a marketing tactic

Despite the general sales boost associated with power ballads, most record labels feel that releasing a ballad in the fall or winter will help the single become a bigger commercial hit, as it fits the mood of the cold and dark setting of the season. It also helps sell the artists album more if a ballad becomes a big hit during the holiday shopping season. RCA Records, whose artist roster includes Christina Aguilera and Kelly Clarkson, is known to use this to their advantage. In particular, Aguilera has employed these tactics several times. In the fall of 2002, her power ballad "Beautiful" was released during the holiday season and became her biggest hit to date. The following year, the same formula was used with "The Voice Within", to lesser effect. In 2006, RCA did it again with a song called "Hurt", the 2nd single off of Aguilera's album, Back to Basics. In fact, Aguilera wanted an uptempo track to be released as the 2nd single, but RCA felt that a power ballad during the holiday season would help sell her album. The release of the single was even delayed in order for it to peak accordingly during the holiday season.