Word: balladeers
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...LEANN RIMES has loved and lost more times than Tammy Wynette. As it turns out, though, this Texas chanteuse is still at an age where heartbreak is a bad game of spin the bottle. Rimes, 13, is churning out teardrops across the country with her first single, Blue, a ballad originally written for Patsy Cline. Rimes' rendition has soared up the country charts, putting her in the company of idols like Wynonna Judd. "Everybody's starting to know who I am," Rimes says. But do fans believe she's 13? "No," she admits. "They want to see my birth certificate...
...album kicks off with Real Love, Lennon's dreamy 1979 ballad to which Paul, George and Ringo added sweet harmonies and rhythmic heft. There's also 12-Bar Original, a metallic-blues instrumental from 1965. Two other "new" songs are from that year: Paul's flaccid That Means a Lot, recorded as a demo for a single by P.J. Proby; and a Ringo vocal, If You've Got Trouble, with inanely taunting lyrics: "You think I'm soft in the head/ Well, try someone softer instead...
Some songs play like wrenching testimony given by a member of Humans Anonymous. In the devastating A Thousand Times a Day (another Nicholson ballad, this one written with Gary Burr), the speaker proclaims that she's given up cigarettes and booze. "Those were tough, this is easy,/And it feels so good to say,/ Forgetting you is not that hard to do,/I've done it a thousand times a day." Loveless performs the number at dirge tempo--if it were any slower it would be going backward--dramatizing all the dread resolve and the lingering uncertainty in saying...
Several songs stand out. On the mournfully romantic ballad Laura, Hargrove takes the lead, lingering over each note of the song as if slowed by sorrow. On the nostalgic April in Paris, Scott goes solo and, through a succession of stately, undulating shifts in mood and rhythm, finds fresh, melancholy elegance in an old standard...
...radio station is playing 81 hours of Sinatra tunes, one for each of his years, plus one for luck. "Sinatra brought a physical vitality to his music that was unique," says TIME's Martha Duffy. "He's one of the few people, like Paul McCartney, who has kept the ballad tradition alive. As a singer, he's truly an artist of the first rank. He doesn't debase a line, and his phrasings bring out the real meaning of a song." On Thursday, ABC television will air a two-hour birthday special, which was taped in November. Among the stars...