Word: balladic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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McGwire responded first by grimly ignoring the pressure: he wouldn't discuss the record, threatened to end the batting- practice show and, for a short stint, denied some interview requests. Then--and here's the part of the film where we cue the Aerosmith ballad--he internalized the pressure and turned it into motivation. He held press conferences before every road series. He started to smile at reporters. By the end, when the fans' flashbulbs made the park seem like it was being pelted by a summer lightning storm, he stood in the on-deck circle with his eyes closed...
...become a key incubator of young talent. His playing is plenty soulful on his second CD--so you'd think, given the title--but with a dry, sometimes acerbic tone that gives the album a haunting edge; listeners may be reminded of John Coltrane's way with a ballad or the blues. As a composer, Irby has a gift for melody, and there are so many fine touches on this disc that it's hard to believe nearly all of it was recorded in a single session...
...legend was sealed by A Pirate Looks at Forty, a mournful 1974 ballad that is still a concert highlight. When its narrator, a pirate born "200 years too late," offers up a confession--"I've done a bit of smugglin'/ I've run my share of grass/ I made enough money to buy Miami but I pissed it away so fast"--Buffett's fans assumed he was singing about himself. In fact, he wrote the song about one of his disreputable friends. "I was never the damn pirate," says Buffett...
Give us the '40s Margaret O'Brien. Now there was a child actress who knew that childhood could be an orphanage, an abode of isolation, misery and misunderstanding. When Miss Margaret's lower lip got to quivering in Meet Me in St. Louis, why, it took a Judy Garland ballad to dredge the poor kid out of depressive hysterics...
...crooning and cooing, by whispering his way through songs, he forces listeners to really listen, to confront the emotions in his songs rather than avoid them through the cathartic escape hatch of volume. One song, the gorgeous, unhurried Submerge: Til We Become the Sun, is an abstractly worded ballad about two lovers flowing into each other and facing up to their deepest selves. "I think people are a lot smarter than they are credited for being," says Maxwell. "I like to challenge what some people think most people will accept and listen to, particularly African Americans and particularly...