Word: balladeers
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Raising Boston subway fares has always been an emotional affair. In 1948, a fare hike from ten to fifteen cents inspired one of the great folk songs of the 20th century, J. Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes' "The MTA Song." The ballad tells the story of a man named Charlie who rides "forever 'neath the streets of Boston," without a nickel to pay the subway's new exit fare. Walter O'Brien, a Boston politician, used the tale of the famous "man who never returned" in his 1948 mayoral campaign, promising to repeal the fare hike and "get Charlie...
...Womack has such a hit in I Hope You Dance, which has spent most of the summer as the No. 1 country single. A sort of 12-step program in verse ("Don't let some hell-bent heart leave you bitter/When you come close to selling out, reconsider"), this ballad by Mark D. Sanders and Tia Sillers gets a luscious setting, with Womack crooning it like a lullaby to a sad child. The song is sweet and swell, but it's not all that's special about the Jacksonville, Texas, singer...
...country-music aberration, no preteen Billy Ray Cyrus. As he shows on this set of puppy-love tunes and hound-dog rave-ups, Gilman is a real singer--sort of Charlotte Church gone Nashville--with impressive breath control and a fine sense of drama. On the title ballad, for instance, he'll hold a long note without hoking it up, without forsaking its texture or personality. This is a voice of choirboy purity, before it gets weathered and leathered by whiskey and cigarettes. Listen to it before it changes; puberty awaits Billy like a bad career move...
...slapped on books, video games and movies. ("We tell them, 'Think Modern Humorist's Scuba School with Corey Haim,'" cracks Colton.) The money has been used to hire a staff of 10 and add multimedia. MH's "Summer Movie eView" includes audio files like a fake Aerosmith ballad for The Patriot...
DIED. FRANK PATTERSON, 58, Irish tenor who recorded 36 albums in six languages, in styles ranging from opera to folk ballad; of cancer; in New York City...