Word: balladeering
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...Sentimental Thing" is a lovely ballad, in which Jackson wisely plays with lyrical lines of unequal lengths and correspondingly non-correspondent meters. The instrumental bridge is a string quartet; the coda is also counched in lush strings, with Askew contributing a haunting, wordless "Madame Butterfly" type aria. This segues into an instrumental, "Acropolis Now," which begins promisingly as a hybrid between '80s rock and Greek folk guitar, but it begins to maunder soon after and degenerates into a fairly close approximation of a jam session by a forgotten, early '70s band. The side closes with the title track, which reverses...
Side Two opens with "Rant and Rave," a tempo-shifter with fun horn charts and fascinating rhythms; this is followed by "Nineteen Forever," another anthemic track in the "Blaze of Glory" mode and about as interesting. "The Best I Can Do" is a ballad that suffers by comparison with its Side 1 counterpart, largely because it's melody becomes monotonous after the requisite three or four repetitions...
Mitchell's forthcoming book Icelandic Legendary Sagas considers the evolution of some 30 Norse epics from prose texts into ballads. In this text, the literature expert examines the function of the poetic ballad in medieval society and the impact the genre had on society at the time, he says...
...says the book will take a new approach to analysis of Norse poetry by following the narrative text of an individual ballad as its characteristics alter over time. In this way, he will discover how the plot has or has not remained faithful to the original poetic form, as well as examining the narrative's changing impact on society...
Richards' lyrics are adequate, if not great. "You Don't Move Me"--a swipe at Mick Jagger for his current reluctance to record with other Stones--is a litany of lines like "It's no longer funny/It's bigger than money." The album's best track, the country ballad "Locked Away," begins with the wonderfully terse summation, "She swears that I'm the only one/What about yesterday?" The singer goes on to suggest that she, he and his friends "ought to be locked away"--she for her faithlessness, he for his insane jealousy, and his friends for their insensitivity...