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A sentimental ballad is an emotional style of music that often deals with romantic and intimate relationships, and to a lesser extent, loneliness, death, war, drug abuse, politics and religion, usually in a poignant but solemn manner. (1987). 9780879723699, Popular Press. ISBN 9780879723699 Ballads are generally melodic enough to capture the listener's attention. (1969). 9780520013995, University of California Press. ISBN 9780520013995
Sentimental ballads are found in most , such as pop music, R&B, soul music, country music, folk music, rock music and electronic music.Ord, J. (1990). Bothy Songs and Ballads. Edinburgh: John Donald. Usually slow in tempo, ballads tend to have a lush musical arrangement which emphasizes the song's melody and harmony. Characteristically, ballads use acoustic instruments such as , , , and sometimes an set. Many modern mainstream ballads tend to feature , and even, to some extent, a dance rhythm.
Sentimental ballads had their origins in the early Tin Pan Alley music industry of the later 19th century.P. Buckley, The Rough Guide to Rock (Rough Guides, 3rd edn., 2003), p. 378. Initially known as "tear-jerkers" or "drawing-room ", they were generally sentimental, narrative, Strophic form songs published separately or as part of an opera, descendants perhaps of broadside ballads. As new genres of music began to emerge in the early 20th century, their popularity faded, but the association with sentimentality led to the term ballad being used for a slow love song from the 1950s onwards.Witmer. See also Middleton (I,4,i).
In the late 19th century, Danish folklorist Svend Grundtvig and Harvard professor Francis James Child attempted to record and classify all the known ballads and variants in their chosen regions. Since Child died before writing a commentary on his work it is uncertain exactly how and why he differentiated the 305 ballads printed that would be published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.T. A. Green, Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art (ABC-CLIO, 1997), p. 352. There have been many different and contradictory attempts to classify traditional ballads by theme, but commonly identified types are the religious, supernatural, tragic, love ballads, historic, legendary and humorous.
By the Victorian era, ballad had come to mean any sentimental popular song, especially so-called "royalty ballads", for which publishers would pay a star singer to promote new songs in exchange for a lump sum or a "royalty signature" on the sheet music and a small percentage of sales.Child, F., J. (1898). The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co Some of Stephen Foster's songs exemplify this genre and, in England, the ballads of Montague Phillips written for his wife Clara Butterworth in the early 1900s. By the 1920s, composers of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway theatre used ballad to signify a slow, sentimental tune or love song, often written in a fairly standardized form. Jazz musicians sometimes broaden the term still further to embrace all slow-tempo pieces.Temperley (II,2). Notable sentimental ballads of this period include, "Little Rosewood Casket" (1870), "After the Ball" (1892), and "Danny Boy" (1913).N. Cohen, Folk Music: a Regional Exploration (Greenwood, 2005), p. 297.
Some rock-oriented acts such as Queen and the Eagles also produced ballads.
When the word ballad appears in the title of a song, as for example in the Beatles' "The Ballad of John and Yoko" (1969) or Billy Joel's "The Ballad of Billy the Kid" (1974), the folk music sense is generally implied. The term ballad is also sometimes applied to strophic story-songs more generally, such as Don McLean's "American Pie" (1971).D. R. Adams, Rock 'n' roll and the Cleveland Connection Music of the Great Lakes (Kent State University Press, 2002), , p. 70.C. H. Sterling, M. C. Keith, Sounds of Change: a History of FM broadcasting in America (UNC Press, 2008), pp. 136-7.
The 1990s mainstream pop/R&B singers such as Boyz II Men, Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey.
Newer female singer-songwriters such as Sarah McLachlan, Natalie Merchant, Jewel, Melissa Etheridge and Sheryl Crow also broke through on the AC chart during this time owing to their ballad-sound.Hyatt, Wesley (1999). The Billboard Book of Number One Adult Contemporary Hits. New York City: Billboard Books. .
Aaron argues that the hard rock power ballad broke into the mainstream of American consciousness in 1976 as FM radio gave a new lease of life to earlier impassioned songs such as Badfinger's "Without You", Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and Aerosmith's "Dream On". The Carpenters' 1972 single "Goodbye to Love" has also been identified as a prototype of the power ballad, driven by the hard rock guitar sound of Tony Peluso. British heavy metal band Judas Priest wrote many power ballads, starting with "Dreamer Deceiver" and "Beyond the Realms of Death".
American rock band Styx has been credited with releasing the first true power ballad, the song "Lady", in 1973. Its writer, Dennis DeYoung is called the "father of the power ballad". In 1976 the heavy metal band Kiss shocked their fans with the release of the ballad
"Beth", (essentially a solo track by Peter Criss, produced by Bob Ezrin on which no other members of the band played).
In the 1980s, bands such as Journey and REO Speedwagon contributed to the power ballad becoming a staple of hard rock performers who wanted to gain more radio airplay and satisfy their female audience members with a slower, more emotional love song. Mötley Crüe was one of the bands showcasing this style, with songs such as "Home Sweet Home" and "You're All I Need". Nearly every hard rock and glam metal band wrote at least one power ballad for each album, and record labels often released these as the album's second single. In 2008, Classic Rock critic Paul Elliott declared Journey's 1983 song "Faithfully" to be "the greatest power ballad of all time".
When grunge appeared as a counterpoint to the excesses of 1980s hard rock and glam metal, one of the distinctions of the grunge style was the absence of power ballads; however, some songs from this era such as "Rooster" by Alice in Chains (1992), which Ned Raggett described as the band's "own particular approach" to the style, and "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden (1994) have been described using this term, and songs in its subgenre post-grunge included ballads.
One of the most well-known Latin ballad singers of the 1970s and 1980s was José José. Known as "El Principe de La Cancion" (The Prince of the Song), he sold over 40 million albums in his career and became a huge influence to later ballad singers such as Cristian Castro, Alejandro Fernández, Nelson Ned, Manuel Mijares and Lupita D'Alessio.
1950s–1960s
Popular sentimental ballad vocalists in this era include Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, Connie Francis and Perry Como. Their recordings were usually lush orchestral arrangements of current or recent rock and roll or pop music hit songs. The most popular and enduring songs from this style of music are known as "pop standards" or (where relevant) "American standards". Many vocalists became involved in 1960s' vocal jazz and the rebirth of swing music, which was sometimes referred to as "easy listening" and was, in essence, a revival of popularity of the "" that had been popular during the swing era, but with more emphasis on the vocalist and the sentimentality.
1970s
Soft rock, a subgenre that mainly consists of ballads, was derived from folk rock in the late 1960s, using acoustic instruments and putting more emphasis on melody and harmonies. Major sentimental ballad artists of this decade included Barbra Streisand, Nana Mouskouri, Elton John, Engelbert Humperdinck, Carole King, Cat Stevens and James Taylor. By the early 1970s, softer ballad songs by the Carpenters, Anne Murray, John Denver and Barry Manilow began to be played more often on "Top 40" radio.
1980s–1990s
Prominent artists who made sentimental ballads in the 1980s include Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Peabo Bryson, Barry White, Luther Vandross and George Michael.
2000s
A popular trend in the early 2000s was remixing or re-recording dance music hits into acoustic pop ballads (for example, the "Candlelight Mix" versions of "Heaven" by DJ Sammy, "Listen to Your Heart" by DHT, and "Everytime We Touch" by Cascada).Joel Whitburn (2007). Billboard Top Adult Songs 1961-2006 (Record Research Inc.), page 373.
2010s
In the 2010s, indie musicians like Imagine Dragons, Mumford & Sons, Of Monsters and Men, the Lumineers and Ed Sheeran had indie songs that crossed over to the adult contemporary charts, due to their ballad-heavy sound.
Genres
Jazz and traditional pop
Most traditional pop and jazz ballads are built from a single, introductory verse, usually around 16 bars in length, and they end on the dominant – the chorus or refrain, usually 16 or 32 bars long and in AABA form (though other forms, such as ABAC, are not uncommon). In AABA forms, the B section is usually referred to as the bridge; often a brief coda, sometimes based on material from the bridge, is added, as in "Over the Rainbow".D. Randel, The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, (Cambridge MS: Harvard University Press, 1986) , p. 68.Buchan, D. (1972). The Ballad and the Folk. East Linton: Tuckwell Press
Pop and R&B ballads
The most common use of the term "ballad" in modern pop music and R&B music is for an emotional song about romance, breakup and/or Desire. The singer would usually lament an unrequited love or lost love, either where one party is oblivious to the existence of the other, where one party has moved on, or where a romantic affair has affected the relationship.Smith, L.: Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, and the Torch Song Tradition, p. 9. Praeger Publishers, 2004.Allan Forte, M. R.: Listening to Classic American Popular Songs, p. 203. Yale University Press, 2001.
Power ballads
Simon Frith, the British sociomusicologist and former rock critic, identifies the origins of the power ballad in the emotional singing of Soul music artists, particularly Ray Charles, and the adaptation of this style by performers such as Eric Burdon, Tom Jones, and Joe Cocker to produce slow-tempo songs often building to a loud and emotive chorus backed by drums, electric guitars, and sometimes choirs.S. Frith, "Pop Music" in S. Frith, W. Straw and J. Street, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 100-1. According to Charles Aaron, power ballads came into existence in the early 1970s, when rock stars attempted to convey profound messages to audiences while retaining their "macho rocker" mystique. The hard rock power ballad typically expresses love or heartache through its lyrics, shifting into wordless intensity and emotional transcendence with heavy drumming and a distorted electric guitar solo representing the "power" in the power ballad.
Latin ballad
Latin ballad refers to the ballad derived from bolero that originated in the early-1960s in Latin America and Spain.
See also
External links
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