The power ballad as an anthem for my time
If you are of a certain age, and only mildly deaf, then you can identify with strapping on your air guitar. You strike the pose, you strike the chord, you start up the vocal generator and begin your best ever performance of the power ballad. Are you with me? On stage? Good.
This evening, while I kept an eye on the kids over at Idol, the rest of the family settled in for the final episode of Les Invicibles. I’ve watched from time to time, but this is really their program. My evening’s entertainment (composed of Motown songs interpreted by the new kids, and followed by a series of random insults) ended, just as the sound from downstairs swelled with a wonderful anthem. What was that song? I couldn’t do a lyric search, because my laptop had declared an emergency power pause. I couldn’t get my head around the text, because I was hearing the music twice, with a three second echo (analog TV downstairs, digital TV upstairs, slightly addled listener caught in the middle). What was that song?
The closing sequence (and no, I won’t be telling you what happened, even if the series has ended) was in the form that I’ve always heard called a “dream ballet”. Think of the sequence in Oklahoma, with Judd Fry. Rent the movie if you must. Anyhow, the good people at Radio Canada didn’t stomp on the closing credits, so my need to know was fulfilled. The power ballad for today is Still Loving You by the Scorpions, from 1984. Klaus Meine can wail!
I wonder if that Guitar Hero game has this as one of the numbers? I could fulfill my need to play air guitar by actually amazing the kids.
