The history of the power ballad
The genre known as rock and roll was never meant to be easy listening. For every great rock and roll band that came around, the songs tended to either excite an audience or scare them to death based on what the lyrics were trying to convey. Playing the same riff style does tend to get monotonous, and the greatest in heavy music, from Led Zeppelin to Van Halen, began to twist their songs around for what is known as the power ballad.
Granted, it’s not like rock and roll has ever been devoid of great soft songs. Throughout their career, The Beatles made their trade on ballads, whether it was the sentimental love songs from Paul McCartney or the wild thought experiments that John Lennon dreamed up. As bands like Led Zeppelin started to find their footing, that brand of rock and roll started to go out the door in favour of heavy riffs.
When Zeppelin began to tire of the same riff repeatedly, their approach to the ballad catered towards folk-rock, featuring delicate acoustic songs like ‘Thank You’ and ‘Going to California’ in their arsenal. Across the pond, shock rockers Kiss were also going through their first dips into pop balladry on their song ‘Beth’.
Looking to get a female presence at their shows, the New York makeup-clad band penned a touching tribute to the women back home, striking a nerve with a national audience who saw the men behind the demonic warpaint. As other bands started incorporating their softer material, though, some acts were going against the grain to keep the headbanging tunes going.
For the entirety of the David Lee Roth era of Van Halen, the band couldn’t be bothered with performing ballads, creating songs that were balls-to-the-wall throughout their entire runtime. Once Sammy Hagar joined the group, though, their penchant for pop-centric melodies went through the roof, with their biggest hits afterwards spawning from ballads like ‘Why Can’t This Be Love?’ and ‘Right Now’.
Van Halen’s success coincided with the golden age of the power ballad in the 1980s, with every band that blossomed from the Sunset Strip having that one song that brought things down a notch, from Poison’s ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’ to Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’. Then again, there is no set pattern to any of the ballads that have come before.
Outside of having an acoustic guitar in a handful of places, every ballad tends to come from the heart, either dealing with a breakup or giving an excuse for the eternal party animals to get serious and write a love song. Even when sculpting ballads from the ground up, Van Halen’s don’t sound like Kiss or Aerosmith and are miles above anything Poison or Warrant would ever put out.
As much as a power ballad might be a fixture of hair metal, the thrash fans weren’t safe either. Although seasoned veterans like Anthrax stayed the course throughout their careers, Metallica and Megadeth made their biggest hits when cribbing through their soul, seeing a resurgence on the charts thanks to tracks like ‘Nothing Else Matters’ and ‘A Tout Le Monde’ respectively.
Then again, all power ballads were practically out the door by the time grunge came in. Compared to the lavish sound of whatever pop marvel that Cinderella was putting out, Kurt Cobain sounded like the most genuine man on Earth as he screamed at the top of his lungs in the videos for ‘In Bloom’ and ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.
Even though grunge sounded the death knell for hair metal, power ballads persisted before and after the alternative wave kicked in. Despite being a joke in the flannel era, artists like Aerosmith saw massive success off of their ballads after the fact, creating their only number-one hit when recording the ballad ‘I Don’t Want to Miss A Thing’.
Nowadays, though, a ballad is one of the only types of rock songs that radio will be remotely bothered with anymore. Whereas bands may have made their trade with anthems back in the day, the only way they can cross over now is by dipping into easy listening territory, sometimes even featuring another big name to get them to the top of the charts again. The ballad may have seemed like a cop-out back in the day, but looking at where the mainstream rock scene has ended up, that brand of songwriting is one of the only forms left standing.
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