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The Power Ballad and the Power of Sentimentality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 June 2015
Abstract
As is evident in their popularity and uses in television and film, power ballads have been prized for their emotional intensity. That intensity results from the ways in which the songs transform aspects of sentimentality developed in nineteenth- and twentieth-century repertoires, particularly parlor songs and torch songs. Power ballads energize sentimental topics and affects with rapturous feelings of uplift. Instead of concentrating on individual emotions like earlier sentimental songs do, power ballads create charged clouds of mixed emotions that produce feelings of euphoria. The emotional adrenaline rushes in power ballads are characteristic of larger experiences in popular culture in which emotions are to be grand, indiscriminate, and immediate.
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References
1 For a discussion of the history and musical features of the power ballad see Metzer, David, “The Power Ballad,” Popular Music, 31, 3 (Oct. 2012), 437–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Two rich discussions offered by popular-music critics are Eddy, Chuck, The Accidental Revolution of Rock ‘n’ Roll: A Misguided Tour through Popular Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997), 51–63 Google Scholar; and Aaron, Charles, “Don't Fight the Power,” in Lethem, Jonathan, ed., Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002 (New York: Da Capo Press, 2003), 127–34Google Scholar.
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4 The ballad is also not a musical form. On the contrary, the songs typically use the verse–chorus forms common in popular music.
5 The earliest usage of the term that I have been able to find is that by radio DJ Gus Gossert in “Programmer Speaks Up,” Billboard, 21 Nov. 1970, 30.
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8 For a more detailed history of the power ballad see Metzer, 444–54.
9 There were songs before the 1970s that used parts of the power ballad musical formula, but the pattern did not become standardized until that decade. The songs of Manilow played an important role in setting the formula.
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33 The song was composed by Dianne Warren, a master of the power ballad genre, for R & B star JoJo's 2006 CD The High Road. Charice, it should be mentioned, was an adolescent, not a child, when she performed the song; however, her presentation in the media has linked her with childhood, as she has appeared on several television programs devoted to talented children, like the Oprah Winfrey show mentioned below.
34 Drawing upon Schiller's distinction between “naive” and “sentimental” poetry, Chandler argues that works adhering to what he calls the “sentimental mode” feature “mixed emotions.” Chandler, though, never describes the charged clouds of different, and often conflicting, emotions characteristic of power ballads. Chandler, An Archeology of Sympathy, 152–53.
35 The show aired on 18 May 2009 and was the finale program in Oprah's “Search for the World's Most Talented Kids” series.
36 Music is, of course, far from emotionally precise, and listeners respond to pieces with a great deal of latitude. What stands out here, though, is the difference between older sentimental repertoires that used specific and highly conventional means to target particular emotions and the power ballad, which whips up euphoric blasts to offer sensations of emotionality.
37 There might be such a song: Josh Groban's 2003 recording of “You Raise Me Up.” It melodically paraphrases “Danny Boy,” a classic sentimental number. The weepy graveside vigil of the treasured song now gives way to praises of spiritual and emotional uplift, conveyed through two modulations in Groban's recording.
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