Word: balladic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Foster owes his current hitmaking not to changing with the times but to realizing that one kind of song bridges generation gaps: the ballad. While dance steps come and go, from twisting to voguing, kids and grownups alike still want slow numbers that let them pull their partners close. "There's always been a ballad in the Top 10," says Foster. "People love something with heart." For a while, teens favored the "power ballads" put out by hard-rock bands with gravel-voiced vocalists, but Foster has helped bring back the singing group. All-4-One, Color Me Badd...
Even on "Out of Tears," a ballad that sounds like it was meant for Top 40 stations across the nation, the Stones can't seem to muster the wrenching desperateness that made "Love in Vain" a slow staple. Luckily, the next song, "I Go Wild," comes to the rescue by managing to pick up a bit of the brashness of the "If You Can't Rock Me." This song also supplies a quick and non incongrous breath of "Gimme Shelter" from Ron Woods' b-bender guitar, two-thirds of the way through...
...prayer." The album begins playfully with Maybe, a Strayhorn rarity written for Horne, and she gives it an easy swing that belies its hard-won wisdom ("Love is a shoestring/ Any way you tie it, it may become undone ...") Next comes Something to Live For, the great Strayhorn-Ellington ballad about having it all without having love, which Horne suffuses with trembling vulnerability. She's raucous and tough on another worldly Strayhorn number, Love Like This Can't Last. And with beautiful enunciation, she finds the quiet essence of Strayhorn's somewhat precious A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing...
There is little left of the sultry vocal finish Horne possessed back in the '40s and '50s. Today her voice reveals its grain, like fine old furniture. Nevertheless she can still sustain with silky ease a long-lined ballad like the album's dreamy title song or the touching finale, My Buddy. How has Horne kept her voice in such good shape? She laughs. "You mean through the postnasal drip? I don't sing in the shower, and I never vocalize -- it's too embarrassing. I only sing when I have to do a job. Then, to prepare...
...English and French version of "My Village," a warm, tender ballad, Adjaffi recalls his native land and the beginning of his singing career. He ends the song: "I remember," seemingly a promise to not let go of his past...