Part 1 of this series touched on where ballads fit in the modern musical taxonomy. I featured five early examples of power ballads—ballad-style songs by bands that are better known for a hard rock or heavy metal sound. Each song was paired with an example of the band’s more “typical” hard rock or metal sound.
In Part 2, I’ll continue roughly chronologically, with five more of the best known power ballads. I won’t pair them with harder songs—you can still hear the “weight” of each band’s sound. Interestingly, three of these songs are about loneliness--a frequent theme of power ballads, as it turns out.
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Ballads have a long history, one that spans hundreds of years and many of the world’s cultures. In fact, their roots go back to the beginnings of story-telling itself.
In Europe, the predecessors to ballads originated back when very few people could read, let alone write. Before writing became widely adopted, history and cultural traditions were passed along orally, in the form of long poems, transmitted from generation to generation by story-tellers who were like living encyclopedias. When those story-tellers set their accounts to music, they essentially invented the ballad.
In the early 1900s, Millman Parry and his student Albert Lord traveled the world, recording the oral histories and folk songs of dozens of cultures on the verge of extinction. Lord even taught himself to play traditional instruments from some of the tribes he studied. I was lucky enough to catch his course on Oral and Folk Literature when I was in college. He was, at that point, an Emeritus professor, a year away from fully retiring, and himself a legend.
Lord performed songs for us that are not even known anymore in their lands of origin. It was a strange and haunting experience. Today, some people have accused him of cultural appropriation. I find that an absurd, even offensive accusation. To me, what he did was clearly an act of profound love and respect. Without him, there would be no record of most of those songs, or even the cultures that birthed them.
This birthing happened at different times in different cultures. In India it probably happened two or three thousand years ago. In Europe it seems to have happened sometime during the Middle Ages. The French term “ballade” actually refers to dancing — the songs were often dance-able, rather than just somber or sentimental.
Today, we use the terms “folk song” and “ballad” roughly interchangeably. However, they are not entirely the same. First of all, folk songs are often very old, with their authorship unknown. They have become traditions in their communities. They can be ballads, but the term “ballad” today refers more to a style of performance.
Modern folk songs can actually be pretty lively, as were the original ballads. The association of the word “ballad” with slow, sentimental songs, is relatively recent. And the focus on romantic heartbreak is also recent — ballads used to be about all kinds of topics from history to family feuds to wanderlust and homesickness.
As far as I can tell, the current connotation of the word came about after rock music burst on the scene, with its loud and energetic, electrified sound. Suddenly, older styles of music sounded sedate. And old themes of love and loss became quaint and sentimental. Of course, a lot of rock is still about romantic love, but it’s quite distinct from the more traditional trope of someone crooning along to acoustic accompaniment.
As in Part 1, I wanted to share some ballads by musicians who normally go hard, heavy and loud. What makes these songs special is the sense of restrained intensity just below the surface. In Part 1, I compared it to experiencing a small earthquake, while knowing that it could have been much bigger.
What all of these songs have is emotional impact. That impact is not a coincidence — it owes itself in part to the sonic qualities of the arrangements. These are also usually among the best-known songs by the respective bands, and some of them have become signposts of their era.
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Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath, along with fellow bands Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, are generally viewed as the original heavy metal bands. Purple and Zeppelin explored a lot of tangents starting in their early years (both, for example, dabbled in psychedelia and symphonic rock) so they never became dedicated metal bands.
For their first five or six albums, Sabbath remained committed to the heavy, increasingly demonic sound that became their trademark, and set the direction for generations of metal bands. It is no coincidence that the late Ozzy Osbourne was given the moniker “Prince of Darkness”. He defined Sabbath’s vocal sound for their first ten years, and kept at it even after leaving the band.
By their seventh album, “Technical Ecstacy”, Sabbath were experimenting with new ideas and sounds. The progressive rock era was well under way, defined by groups like Genesis, Yes, King Crimson and Pink Floyd. Sabbath also began playing with synthesizers and backing tracks and more. This album includes not one, but two ballads.
Ozzy’s voice lends itself perfectly to “She’s Gone” (no, not the H&O abomination 🙄). He conveys an overwhelming sense of despair. The instrumentation is spare and almost dry, contributing to the abandoned feeling. Hear for yourself:
“She’s Gone” (1976)
Heart
Heart were ahead of their time. They were doing hard rock in the early 1970s, before most bands dared, and to make things more confounding, they featured women in lead roles. Sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson were part of the original lineup, and ended up being the only constant members of the band throughout its 52-years-and-counting history. Heart is rightly regarded as their band.
The Wilsons were part of a small but potent club of women (along with Suzi Quatro, Joan Jett, Chrissie Hynde, Lita Forde, Patti Smith, Debbie Harry and a handful of others) who reclaimed a piece of rock at a time when it had become almost exclusively a man’s world.
Heart were part of my college soundtrack. Unlike other hard-rock bands, they also had a lot of fans who were women. I’d like to think it wasn’t just because they featured women in lead roles.
They endured their share of controversy. There were rumors that the sisters were somehow associated with Charles Manson — the song “Magic Man” was interpreted by some as being about him. Many of my peers in our colleges days believed those conspiracies. The sisters just found that bizarre, and have always denied any connection.
Heart covered a lot of ground stylistically, but always kept their roots as a hard-rock band. They went through a period of instability, and eventually their whole lineup turned over, with the exception of the Wilson sisters. They came back stronger than ever, including their biggest hit, this heart-stopping ballad:
“Alone” (1987)
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The Scorpions
They were one of the few (non-British, or is that now redundant?) European rock groups to break through in the U.S. They had been doing hard rock since 1965, when they released this.
To benchmark the history, remember that in 1965, the Beatles were still doing pop!
The Scorpions distilled the influences of all the big styles of rock that came before them. They rode the arena-rock movement longer than all of their contemporaries, in part by letting their sound continually evolve. They ended up coming full circle, releasing their biggest hit just before grunge rock began taking over the airwaves. And they are still touring!
This song is a meditation on the tidal wave of social change happening in the world and in their home country of Germany around the time the Berlin Wall fell. If you didn’t follow the rock scene, you may not have known who did this song, but you have certainly heard it. It was their highest charting song in the U.S., and was everywhere.
It often shows up in snippets in movie soundtracks and adverts. The melody of the main chorus has been plagiarized countless times by other rock bands — sort of the way ABBA were relentlessly plagiarized in the pop world.
“Wind of Change”
Metallica
Heavy metal was invented and initially led by British bands. Metallica were the breakout American metal band, and eventually became one of the biggest bands of all time. While they went harder than most of the British bands, Metallica always remained interested in composition and melody.
They are considered the definitive thrash-metal band — insistent drumming, distorted guitars turned up to 11, heavy bass, and a lot of dark lyrics. Many other bands emulated them, or tried to. Their contemporaries in the thrash movement have mostly retired or died. Metallica are still touring.
“I thought Metallica was just about the four of us — destroying things, headbanging, bleeding for the crowd” — James Hetfield.
“Nothing Else Matters” represented a sharp divergence from their usual style. It was initially composed by the band’s founder, James Hetfield, on an acoustic guitar. It was not meant to be released. It was about missing his loved ones in the midst of one of Metallica’s legendarily brutal, non-stop tours. One of his band-mates overheard him singing it to himself, and persuaded him to arrange it for the whole band.
When they did release it, some of their hard-core fans were outraged. They worried the band was going “soft”. But the song became a big crossover hit, introducing millions of people to Metallica and to metal itself. Now it is a fan favorite, and a must-have in every concert.
“Nothing else Matters” (1991; live performance 2009)
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Nightwish
Nightwish were founded in 1996 and were pioneers of symphonic rock — the fusion of classical-style composition with rock instrumentation. They are Finland’s biggest cultural export — little known in the U.S. but commanding huge followings in Europe, South America and Asia.
Their sound was built around their original vocalist, Tarja Turunen, a trained opera and classical singer. In 2005, at the height of their power and popularity, the band had a bitter breakup with Turunen and nearly disbanded completely.
They eventually hired a new singer (Anette Olzon) and released one successful album with her. However, the band’s physically exhausting touring schedule, coupled with the stress of constantly being compared to Turunen, led to Olzon having a breakdown in the middle of their 2012 Americas tour.
Desperate to save the tour, the band called an old friend, Floor Jansen, and asked if she could step in. It was a huge gamble for all of them — she flew to the U.S. with only two days to learn the set list. They finished out the remaining U.S. dates, mostly in small venues, while getting used to each other.
Then they headed to South America, where they have a passionate fan-base. In Buenos Aires, they faced an arena full of anxious fans. By the end of the set, Floor had won them over. She joined the band permanently soon thereafter.
In this clip, they return to the scene of that triumph:
“The Dead Boy’s Poem” (2000; Live performance 2018)
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Postscript
Thus far, in Parts 1 and 2, I have taken things roughly chronologically. I’ll continue in Part 3, while looking at how power ballads have evolved as the bands have grown increasingly heavy and technical.
Suggestions are always welcome! If they don’t fit into Part 3, there may be a Part 4!
Sources for the history of ballads and folk songs:
Ethnologue
https://www.ethnologue.com/
Albert Lord, 1960 “Singer of Tales”, Harvard University Press https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674975736
Wind of Change! Yes, haven't listened to that in awhile. This is a great list.
Five incredible ballads and incontrovertible proof that metal and hard rock songs can be heartgrippingly beautiful.