There are two kinds of song that we really don't make the way we used to: power ballads and slow-dance songs, and our society is poorer for it.
Do we feel like we've somehow moved beyond such raw, uncomplicated shows of emotion? In this age of the internet and irony having to be constantly on guard, are we too afraid to bare our souls the way we used to?
I'm really asking, because while the 80s and 90s were an awful time for hair and pants, they inspired great things in music.
I mean, get a load of this. This is good shit. This is no-holds-barred, balls-out rock and roll, about unrestrained, uncomplicated, unfulfilled desire.
One thing I didn't know until recently is that Heart wasn't the first artist to perform "Alone," which debuted on the CBS show Dreams, performed by Valerie Stevenson and John Sta--wait, John Stamos? Really?
Of course, that's not even the best performance of this song on a TV sitcom, because Kristen Chenoweth and Matthew Morrison sang the shit out of "Alone" on an early episode of Glee, back when the show was good and before it got away from Ryan Murphy. I bring that up because hearing "Alone" as a duet made me aware how I'd disregarded it as 80s schmaltz, instead of appreciating it for what it is.
So what is it? It's a dynamic tour de force. It starts with a delicate, twinkly-piano verse that's straight out of Heart in Motion-era Amy Grant, then they open the ark of the goddamn covenant. Seriously--go to the first chorus in that video, about 49 seconds in, and see how they literally blow the lid off the piano.
And after that it's like pouring jet fuel into the afterburner. It's all big hair blowing in the wind and wild dresses and vocal excess sufficient to tempt Celine Dion to cover this song again. I'm completely convinced, for the record, that the treacherous Duras sisters of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lursa and B'etor, weren't inspired at least in part by Ann and Nancy Wilson. It's that kind of song.
But the second chorus is even better, because the bridge comes in before--you've heard the chorus once, but it's sufficiently indelible that you can fill in the gaps on your own (alone, as it were) based only on the chord progression, while Ann Wilson just opens her mouth and lets flow the righteous justice of God Himself, before returning to the original theme.
Maybe the reason they don't make power ballads like this--and I mean big, phallic monuments to the concept of going big or going home--is that we've discovered that it's just simply impossible to go any bigger than we've gone already.
I mean, get a load of this. This is good shit. This is no-holds-barred, balls-out rock and roll, about unrestrained, uncomplicated, unfulfilled desire.
One thing I didn't know until recently is that Heart wasn't the first artist to perform "Alone," which debuted on the CBS show Dreams, performed by Valerie Stevenson and John Sta--wait, John Stamos? Really?
Of course, that's not even the best performance of this song on a TV sitcom, because Kristen Chenoweth and Matthew Morrison sang the shit out of "Alone" on an early episode of Glee, back when the show was good and before it got away from Ryan Murphy. I bring that up because hearing "Alone" as a duet made me aware how I'd disregarded it as 80s schmaltz, instead of appreciating it for what it is.
So what is it? It's a dynamic tour de force. It starts with a delicate, twinkly-piano verse that's straight out of Heart in Motion-era Amy Grant, then they open the ark of the goddamn covenant. Seriously--go to the first chorus in that video, about 49 seconds in, and see how they literally blow the lid off the piano.
And after that it's like pouring jet fuel into the afterburner. It's all big hair blowing in the wind and wild dresses and vocal excess sufficient to tempt Celine Dion to cover this song again. I'm completely convinced, for the record, that the treacherous Duras sisters of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lursa and B'etor, weren't inspired at least in part by Ann and Nancy Wilson. It's that kind of song.
But the second chorus is even better, because the bridge comes in before--you've heard the chorus once, but it's sufficiently indelible that you can fill in the gaps on your own (alone, as it were) based only on the chord progression, while Ann Wilson just opens her mouth and lets flow the righteous justice of God Himself, before returning to the original theme.
Maybe the reason they don't make power ballads like this--and I mean big, phallic monuments to the concept of going big or going home--is that we've discovered that it's just simply impossible to go any bigger than we've gone already.
