Hair Bands and Power Ballads: A Retrospective

 There was a time - not so long ago - when hair was high and guitars were louder than your parents yelling "turn that racket down." Just like today, emotions were poured out in heart-to-heart talks, but in falsetto harmonies over guitar solos that seemed magnificently endless.

This was the golden age of hair bands and power ballads, where love was loud, heartbreak was theatrical, and the Bee Gees surprised everyone by somehow staying relevant, like a true hard to kill band does. (Someday, maybe you and I should be one.)

Also, the average music video budget was probably on par with several small countries. Excellent.

Full disclosure: power ballads were not always accurate or insightful.

"Romeo is bleeding" - not true, because according to Billy (Shakespeare) Romeo is poisoned.

"I can see the heaven in your eyes" has a subtle implication that you're both already dead. Kind of a bummer for date night.

"Take me as I am" is just plain wrong if 'as you am' is 'on the can.' Bogus.

As we do well to remember though, power ballads were about feeling, not facts. They were about reaching into the fanny pack of deep emotion wrapped around your spandex-clad being and pulling out something raw, vulnerable, and set to a rhythm you could slow dance to.

The Ballad Blueprint

The formula was entirely, comfortingly, predictable: an acoustic guitar intro, the vulnerable whisper of a lead singer you didn't know could slow down - or sing without screeching - accompanied by the swelling drums and the dramatic key change.

Bands got bonus points for a mind bending solo where the guitarist looked like he was trying to set the strings on fire with the friction his quick fingers made. And a sweaty, red, scrunched up face that said "both my fret board and I are constipated."

These songs gave us titles like Heaven, I Remember You, Home Sweet Home, Don't Know What You've Got (Till It's Gone), and Every Rose Has It's Thorn. None of them had anything to do with horticulture, but everything to do with sobbing into your jean jacket sleeve in the back row of the school bus.

Emotional Support on Cassette

Before texting was even a thing, there was the mixtape, which was a sacred rite of teenage passage. You couldn't always say "I really like you and don't know what to do with those feelings."

In fact, saying that would probably get you a swirlie, a wedgie, and stuffed in a locker by a bigger kid who didn't know what to do with those feelings.

What you could do, though, was hand someone a Maxell tape with Skid Row's I Remember You sandwiched between Bon Jovi and Whitesnake. Such was the awkward love language of our youth.

And yes, these songs became the soundtracks to slow dances, first kisses, and long sulking sessions in your room after getting ghosted. Although, in the 80's and early 90's we didn't call it that. We called it "getting ignored until you got a clue."

Power ballads gave voice to our teenage angst before we had experience enough to put words to it. The pain of heartbreak, the thrill of a new crush, and every other new feeling in between wrapped up in distorted guitars and vocals that could summon dogs from twelve blocks away.

And then there was the trilogy trifecta:

Love Bites, Love Hurts, and Love Ends in a Snot-Bubble and Verbal Diarrhea. 

Okay, that last one was made up, but it felt real. You felt that song in your gut - and probably in your tear-streaked algebra homework.

They Rocked - But Gently

The true genius of power ballads was that they let hair bands be both gods and humans. One minute, the lead singer was doing high kicks in leather pants while chugging Jack Daniels on stage. The next, he was standing in a rainstorm, tearfully crooning about the one that got away.

It might have been emotional whiplash, but it was comforting, too. If Axl Rose could cry in the cold November Rain, maybe it was okay if we did too.

Let's call it unbridled masculinity with a soft underbelly. And a perm. Because these guys looked like they could beat you senseless on a dare, and then write you a poem about the experience.

Aging Like Fine (Boxed) Wine

We've all aged a little bit since then, even if we don't dare admit it. This includes the glam gods of the rock era. Those who were good at it then could still do so now, but maybe they'd have to change the tone a bit. More lyrics like "My heart's a triple bypass on the freeway of love."

Because sometimes love still hurts, but now so does cholesterol.

The high notes are a little lower, because... gravity. The hairlines a little further back, or faded into memory. Those are just things. Like a fine boxed wine, it's the sentiment, not the sediment, that remains. 

In a weird way, age only deepens the power of those ballads. Maybe it's because we now know what true heartache feels like. Experience has taught us what it means to lose, to regret, to hope anew.

Those songs that were once adolescent feelings wrapped in deafening stereo sound now feel, in a sense, oddly profound.

Except maybe Cherry Pie. That one will always be just ridiculous. But you get my point.

The Legacy That Lives

You might think that the era of the power ballad died when grunge came out of the garage with a flannel-clad icepick to the earholes. Don't be fooled.

It just adapted... strip away the distortion, hair, and eyeliner and you'll find the same recipe from power ballads of yore in a Sam Smith song or an Adele anthem.

The yearning, confession, drama - it's all still there, only dressed up differently. Punk bands, alternative rockers, pop ballads, and even the odd country song have picked up the torch.

The power ballad never died. It simply traded in the fireworks for a piano, and possibly a rickety old front porch rocking chair.

We the fans are still here, too. Still singing along. Still making playlists. Still pausing in the grocery store when Love Bites comes on and wondering where all that time went.

Nostalgia is a Heckuva Drug

I think we can all openly agree that part of why these songs still matter is that they're stitched into our memories. They're time machines and not merely music. 

You hear the first few notes of Home Sweet Home and you're back in a bedroom plastered with posters, leg warmers abandoned on the floor, and hairspray bottles literally everywhere.

All your experience is temporarily abandoned for that feeling of not knowing how it'll all turn out, and how exactly is algebra supposed to help me get a date to the formal.

Music glues itself to moments. And power ballads - melodramatic, glory seeking key changes of hymns that they are - attached themselves to some of the best ones.

The Hair Was Big; The Hearts Were Bigger

Say what you will about the style of the time. The teased hair, the leather, the questionable decisions involving scarves, full-face paint and open shirts. But those songs were earnest. They didn't hide behind a wink or a 'tone'. They put it all out there.

Some of those bands still do. Some of them should leave a little at home now. But I still admire them.

They taught us it was okay to feel deeply in snakeskin boots. That expressing vulnerability makes you relatable, not weak. And that no girl can say no if you ask with a killer guitar solo backing you up.

Final Chorus

Here's to the power ballad - slow-dancing, heart-wrenching, over-the-top anthem of both love and loss. 

Here's to the mixtapes, the awkward high school challenges, and the car rides where we stuck our heads out the window and screamed the lyrics to our favorite songs because it made us feel alive and actual psychotherapy was expensive.

Here's to the bands that made us feel a little less like the acne-ridden weirdos with too many emotions and not enough vocabulary we all were.

Here's to the ones that are still pushing their limits, and saying "I may not run with reckless abandon anymore, but I sure still limp with emotion."

Rock on, hairy gods. Rock on.