Word: ballads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...million copies in domestic sales, with 2.5 million more worldwide. Her singles have found 6.3 million buyers in the U.S. (or the same buyer 6.3 million times, exasperated parents may feel). Like a Virgin has sold 1.9 million copies as a single in the U.S., and the ballad Crazy for You recently dislodged USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa's We Are the World single from the top of the charts, though it has now slipped to sixth...
Depeche Mode rips the guts out of Modern Love, and the Modern Love Ballad, by distilling it into its purest form. With a voice oozing tenderness, Alan Wilder sings...
...only study working-class types appear on their album covers. Four uncharismatic youths from Manchester fronted by an ascetic-looking vegetarian with a voice like a choir boy crossed with Slim Whitman, the Smiths burst out in '84 with music that breathed new life into the pop ballad. Vocalist Morrissey (maybe soon singers will call themselves just Sam or Mary) possesses a voice that floats in and around Johnny Marr's guitar riffs in elegant, almost improvised anxiety. Morrissey's lyrics express the range of human emotions from suicidal depression to mild unhappiness; he's the ugly...
Burke, on the other hand, has song with both campus, and Boston rock bands and says that she considers herself a "pop-ballad" singer. In addition, she writes songs, which, she says, are "mostly about love, but not on the idyllic or positive side...
...this version: Soprano Kiri Te Kanawa and Tenor Jose Carreras are Maria and Tony, the doomed lovers from rival gangs; Mezzo Tatiana Troyanos is Maria's friend Anita, who feels that life is all right in America; peerless Mezzo Marilyn Horne makes a cameo appearance singing the gentle ballad Somewhere; and, surprisingly, Bernstein conducts his full score for the first time. Far from being a vanity production with a group of slumming opera stars, however, the performance is convincing and vital...