Power Ballad, Defined

I recently received a CD from the BMG music club called Power Ballads Gold (PBG hereafter), a 2-CD set (***)! After reviewing the list of songs on the CDs, it is apparent to me that there is a great deal of confusion in the discipline about the definition of a power ballad, and I have therefore written this blog entry to authoritatively settle the matter, once and for all. I also refer herein to another power ballads collection, Monster Ballads (MB), which hits somewhat closer to the mark, but still has some serious problem cases.

1. While it is often difficult to establish the exact temporal limits of most social phenomena, there are sometimes markers that establish critical windows. The power ballad is a relatively new musical form instigated by the release of the song “Beth” by Kiss in 1976. “Beth” (PBG I:4) itself is not a power ballad, as will become plain below, but the song opened up space for the power ballad because it was the first overly-popular deviation from a stereotypically hard rock band into what can only be considered pure sap. Its commercial success (reaching #7 on the pop charts), showed even the worst bad boys that they could hit big if they revealed (or at least faked revealing) their soft sides and therefore paved the way for the true power ballad. Given this, no song predating “Beth” can be considered a power ballad. This criterion, incidentally, eliminates the first three songs on PBG, “Lady” by Styx (PBG I:1), “Feel Like Makin’ Love” by Bad Company (PBG I:2), and “Love Hurts” by Nazareth (PBG I:3), although they can also be eliminated for a number of other reasons discussed subsequently.

2. A Power Ballad has to come from a hard rockin’ band, a group whose core identify is deeply imbued with both the attitude and sound of straight-ahead metal-leaning rock. A band like Journey has never performed a power ballad because their catalog is replete with soft, romantic songs. By its very nature, a power ballad must represent a deviation from the characteristic loud and raucous sound that defines the band. Never mind that some hair metal bands made more money from their few power ballads than they ever could’ve made from the rest of their catalog (e.g., Poison’s Every Rose Has Its Thorn, PBG I:14), the band cannot be defined by syrupy romance, but rather must be imbued with Slash and Axl bad-boy posturing. For this reason, I eliminate any song performed by Boston (including “Amanda” PBG I:7), because they simply do not have the attitude to produce the power-ballad contrast.

3. There are a series of stylistic elements that must be a part of the song itself:

a. Sappy, romantic, shallow, insipid lyrics. There’s nothing deep about the power ballad, even though it should be a good tear-jerker. If you have to think about it, it’s not a power ballad (thus I eliminate anything by Queensryche including “Silent Lucidity” PBG II:10). Furthermore, the topic of the lyrics must be romantic love. Other topics are completely out-of-bounds (thereby eliminating White Lion’s “When the Children Cry” PBG I:15 and the Scorpions “Winds of Change” MB 12).

b. Power. Power ballads cannot stay soft and sweet all the way through. They must at some point reflect the core nature of the band (see section 2 above). This is usually accomplished by slamming down power chords at some point in the song, usually in a later repetition of the chorus or in a bridge. Sometimes it can be accomplished by a heavily distorted guitar solo, even without power chords, but this is a relatively rare route to accomplishing the “power.” This is exactly the criterion that disqualifies “Beth” from being an actual power ballad. It never gets off the soft and delivers any distortion. The same goes for Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love is” (PBG I:5) and Extreme’s “More than Words” (PBG II:11; MB 9).

c. A soft arpeggio-laden or arpeggio-simulated introduction, usually played on an acoustic guitar or acoustic piano, but occasionally on a clean (non-distorted) guitar. If played on a piano, the clunkier and more awkward sounding (to emphasize that this person doesn’t usually play this instrument) the better (see esp. “Home Sweet Home” by Motley Crue; “Don’t Close Your Eyes” by Kix PBG II:3). It’s particularly stirring if the drummer comes down off the riser to play the piano. Occasionally, this element doesn’t start the song because the artist is choosing to establish the chorus instead—but in that case, it will make an appearance not too much later (“Headed for a Heartbreak” Winger PBG II.1), or at least when they do their “unplugged” version on MTV.

d. A conspicuously descending bass line. This device really adds a lot of drama to the song and produces a very powerful transition between two parts of the song. The lowest note at the end produces an emphatic valley in the song where all of the players hit hard at the same time, drawing most of the audience’s fists up into the air as well.

e. A hard pounding, descending drum fill, preferably laced with gratuitous triplets ("I’ll Be There for You” by Bon Jovi). Power ballads have to bring in the drums at some point (although they rarely start with the drummers in action). And when they do, they are often introduced at a point that drives from the verse to the chorus in which a relatively simple, but leading, drum fill takes the action forward to the next stage. If it does not occur at the point the drummer first plays in the song, it must appear later in the song (“Don’t Know What You Got until Its Gone” Cinderella MB 8; “Never Say Goodbye” Bon Jovi).

Items d and e are often combined at the same moment (Bon Jovi’s “Bed of Roses” is a classic demonstration of this complementary coincidence).

4. There are a series of desirable, but not required elements. These are commonly found in power ballads as components that nicely complement the required elements, but they are not found in all power ballads, nor is their presence sufficient to establish power balladhood.

a. A pretty-boy heart-throb of a lead singer (See esp. Sebastian Bach of Skid Row).
b. A single line of harmonizing that mysteriously appears for a single phrase (e.g., the final “Every rose has its thorn” in the choruses of the same-named song by Poison).
c. Harmonized guitar solos or guitar fills.
d. Avoid duets. They are, in principle, permitted, but boy-girl schlock duets (like Mike Reno and Nancy Wilson’s “Almost Paradise” MB 4) are not permitted.
e. Endings that fade out rather than ending the song with a crash.
f. Throw in some strings to class it up once in a while.

Based on all of this, I offer ten pure Power Ballads which can be used to define the genre. These are not in any particular order nor are they necessarily the top ten Power Ballads. But they are all Power Ballads.

1. “Heaven” Warrant
2. “Home Sweet Home” Motley Crue
3. “Don’t Close Your Eyes” Kix
4. “I Remember You” Skid Row
5. “Don’t Know What You Got Until It’s Gone” Cinderella
6. “Angel” Aerosmith
7. “Fly to Angels” Slaughter
8. “Bed of Roses” Bon Jovi
9. “I’ll Be There for You” Bon Jovi
10. “Still Loving You” Scorpions

Rhino, Razor and Tie, BMG—let’s get it together, shall we?