Word: ballads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...scene is a composite of dozens of war movies, one of those celluloid images that have become part of the collective mythology. In the foxhole, the baby-faced private is writing a last letter home; the hillbilly soldier is whistling a ballad; the taciturn corporal is just staring wide-eyed into the darkness. Finally, the battle-hardened sergeant speaks, as he lights his last Lucky. "The waiting," he says. "The damn waiting. That's what kills...
...some confusion has always attended John Jarvis' music. When he was pumping the piano in Rod Stewart's band, he bore down hard on the rockers. Then he would slip on down the street to another recording studio and move gently along the keys for an Art Garfunkel ballad. When Stewart and Garfunkel once got to comparing the merits of their favorite keyboardists, it took them a while to realize that they were both talking about Jarvis...
These days, Hunter has little reason to despair, and no time for a penciled- in cry. In Raising Arizona she earned the usual critical raves as canny, resilient Ed McDonnough, lullabying her purloined baby to sleep with a grotesquely poignant backwoods ballad. (Holly chose the Charlie Monroe song herself.) She is happy to keep her private life -- which she shares with Photographer John Raffo -- private. And Hunter, whose goal was always "to be one of the really respected stage actresses," doesn't mind juggling her newfound fame with rehearsals for a Los Angeles production of Sam Shepard...
...course, what consumer-oriented American benefit LP would be complete without an overblown, melodramatic ballad. The idea of Whitney Houston singing "Do You Hear What I Hear" is initially promising, a pure pop voice made to sing simple ballads. This production is more like "We Are the World: The Sequel," with choir-like backup vocals and a very similar melody. There's the same slow beginning and spare verses building to an overpowering climax of Whitney, backup singers, and treacly violins all at once...
...Fault. Several characters die brutally in the grasp of the giantess or at the hands of panicky fellow citizens. Yet what comes out of this chaos is not the jollity of happy endings but a deeper reassurance, born of tolerance and community and shared sacrifice, articulated in the haunting ballad No One Is Alone -- a song as tuneful and touching as Sondheim's Send in the Clowns, but deeper and richer in meaning...