Word: balladeer
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...Spark” greets with random electronica samples from the mid-1980s, but then rolls over into an upbeat, self-confessing rocker that is quintessential road music. Instead of upping the ante, Benson then moves down a gear into “Metarie,” a frankly earnest ballad about the first, halting steps of a burgeoning relationship. Folky guitars, ascending chromatic tones and backing-singer Emma J’s plaintive voice lend the track a haunting, ethereal quality, but for want of a female vocalist, “Metarie” unfortunately didn’t make...
...What'll I Do?", 1924. This ballad of love and longing has a clever bridge that repeats, then elaborates on the chorus; the entire song rises and falls with the mood (first mopey, then insistently desperate) of a lovelorn swain. It was a #1 hit for Paul Whiteman and had five other top-12 renditions in 1924. Twenty-four years later the song went to #22 for Nat Cole and #23 for Frank Sinatra. It was also a minor charter for Johnny Tillotson in 1962 - 38 years later...
...Berlin, suffering from a bout of self-doubt, had written, then written off this pleading ballad (along with another plaint, "How Deep Is the Ocean?"). Then a Berlin associate let megaphone man Rudy Vallee perform it on his radio show. The song was a #1 hit for George Olsen and awarded top-10 perches to versions by Connee Boswell and Ozzie Nelson?s band. In her pop-diva phase, Aretha Franklin had a minor flurry with her single of the song in 1963 - 31 years later...
...tune about sunbelt nostalgia for a snowbelt youth (the verse places the singer in "Beverly Hills, L.A."). A journalist friend told the composer that "White Christmas" wouldn?t be a hit because it was "too schmaltzy," and Berlin himself thought the movie's big hit would be the Valentine ballad "Be Careful, It's My Heart...
...always tell them I have no idea," she says. "Because my parents have taken me back and forth ever since I was a baby." Her father, Teruzane Utada, is a producer and musician who now runs her management company. Her mother, Keiko Fuji, was a popular enka (Japanese ballad) singer in the 1970s who broke her fans' hearts by giving up her career and moving to the U.S. to find a little peace. ("I don't sing anymore," is all Fuji says now, smiling.) Utada says she got her own start when she followed her parents into the studio...