A lot of my solo albums were produced by different people who had their idea of what songs I should do, and they had me doing a lot of ballads.
Aaron Neville
The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species.
Alan Lomax
I get to work a lot of times in nightclubs and large theaters, so I wanted to make music that is fun to perform in those settings. But I also wanted to contrast it with really serious, sincere ballads.
Alaska
The mistake British comedians often make is trying to beat the Americans at their own game - getting visiting American singers on their shows, talking about 'sidewalk' instead of 'pavement,' sitting on high stools in a white dinner jacket doing ballads. That way, you simply end up with a mid-Atlantic mishmash.
Benny Hill
I'm a really new artist here. I would say that my style is an artist who can dance and sing. That's why my album is really upbeat. Maybe we will try slowly to do ballads or middle tempo songs.
BoA
You can't imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.
Bob Dylan
Pat Benatar might need a rock band, but I can just sit with a blues guitar for an hour and a half and do folk songs and great contemporary ballads, and not many people can pull that off.
Bonnie Raitt
Even on the most serious ballads, I'll throw in a tongue-in-cheek remark.
Brad Paisley
From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me.
Cat Power
I tend to gravitate toward ballads and mid-tempo songs.
Charles Kelley
I do appreciate the '80s as an era, the general sounds and aesthetics of the era. The Cure, that whole kind of image is really kind of amazing, I think. The power ballads and how everything sparkles and words are really dramatic. Huge drums, things like that. I do really find it inspiring.
Charli XCX
When I was making my second record, I was in studio, and I was like, 'No more ballads! Absolutely not!' And somebody walked in with 'The Man I Wanna Be' and I heard it and was like, 'Ah, crap!'
Chris Young
I love theatrics and have a huge imagination: Why would I want to sit onstage and sing a bunch of ballads back-to-back?
Christina Aguilera
The worst thing for me when I go to a concert is a whole bunch of ballads. You get bored.
Darius Rucker
I don't just do power ballads. I have a lot of up-tempo stuff, too - like 'Can't Fight the Moonlight.'
Diane Warren
I had studied Irish history. I had read speeches from the dock. I had tried to fuse the vivid past of my nation with the lost spaces of my childhood. I had learned the battles, the ballads, the defeats. It never occurred to me that eventually the power and insistence of a national tradition would offer me only a new way of not belonging.
Eavan Boland
I've been fascinated over the years by the way refrains work. Think, say, of the refrains in Yeats' ballads. Ideally, each time the refrain comes back in a poem, it is both the same and different. It works by counterpoint and reiteration. It accrues meaning.
Edward Hirsch
I like to sing ballads the way Eddie Fisher does and the way Perry Como does. But the way I'm singing now is what makes the money.
Elvis Presley
I am a balladeer. People fall in love to ballads, and that is what makes the world go round.
Engelbert Humperdinck
I was known as a ballad singer who sang melodramatic heavily produced ballads. I'm not known as a mid-tempo singer who does fun songs. I'm not going to do a song like 'Dancing on the Ceiling.'
Eric Carmen
When the second album came out, everybody gravitated immediately to the three and a half minute rock tunes and ignored the ballads. They thought all the Raspberries were was players of high-energy rock songs.
I always wrote ballads, and I always wrote rockers.
Half the people tell me, 'I love 'Go All the Way,' but why do you have to write all those schlocky ballads.' And half say, 'I love 'All By Myself,' but why do you waste your time with this rock 'n' roll stuff?' I'd like to think that I could do both.
The Raspberries had recorded some ballads on every one of our albums, but after 'Go All The Way' was successful Capital pretty much wanted to hear nothing but 'Go All The Way.'
I think up until the 'Honestly' album it was very much label-company lead, of 'this is a sound that we need, this is what you need to do. You need to do ballads, you need to do a million different types of love songs,' and I hate ballads and I hate love songs.
I remember in 2016 when I got signed to my record label Good Soldier, which is a very small indie label. They took a big risk on me because ballads were the furthest thing from cool at the time.
One thing all the way through the show to me is boring. I don't care how great the artist is. I find that if my audience is very young, and they want to hear very young songs, my show will be dominated by that. But there'll be some ballads here and there and some swing tunes.
Cosmic terror appears as an ingredient of the earliest folklore of all races and is crystallised in the most archaic ballads, chronicles, and sacred writings.
I dated someone in the '90s who was really into Metallica, and I remember thinking at the time, 'That just sounds so heavy and hard.' But they have great ballads! Great ballads.
When we do R&B midtempos or ballads, there's an Underdogs sound.
Everyone who knows me knows that I'm a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo-wop songs all the time.
There have never been so many women in the music industry, but they're doing ballads and pop. Where's the new Joan Jetts and the Wanda Jacksons and the Debbie Harrys, all these strong women? I wanna be the woman that rocks.
At 16, I started really loving country music, and Collin Raye just had the most amazing ballads!
If I were not a black artist but I was still singing, playing guitar, and singing ballads that are spiritual and cerebral, I'd be easier to market because people accept that from white female singer-songwriters faster.
Now ballads, I can mess around and get up on somebody on a ballad. People ain't seen it yet, but I can mess around and get up in there. I've had Ruben Studdard up in my house, Brian McKnight, Tank. Every once in a while I throw down with them.
And when power ballads come back, we'll get big hair again.
I love power ballads and the earnest lack of irony and emotion that exists in '80s music, along with synth guitars, of course.
On 'Idol,' I understood that everyone wanted to hear my vocals, so I stuck with the ballads.
I grew up singing ballads, but what I really wanted to get into was the mainstream music on the radio because I really love the beats and everything.
On 'Idol,' you have to show off your vocal abilities, so I stuck to the ballads, so I'm glad my first single is 'Tonight' so I can show off my fun, young side, and what I want to do as an artist.
I do sing ballads, but I'm not a balladeer. I'm not the next Celine Dion.
During the 'ballad' years for me, the politics was latent; I was just falling in love with the ballads and my boyfriend. And there was the beauty of the songs.
I have always been a sucker for ballads, but you have to be careful these days, you can't overload people.
Maybe you could put it out there that I don't have a built-in dislike of ballads. That was kind of the reputation I had back in the Seventies. But I've come around. Ballads have become something of an acquired taste.
We had always put ballads on all of our albums.
I've recorded in Portuguese, too. I didn't set out to just sing ballads or romantic songs.
Fergie will sing ballads to the dogs and they'll sit there rapt. You know your wife's a star when she keeps the dogs entertained for 20 minutes.
Yes, I wrote songs. I was becoming kind of an Enrique Iglesias kind of a singer, with those ballads and cheesy romantic things.
I subscribe to that school of thespian - to be a wandering minstrel or traveling player, a thing ofrags and patches, of ballads, songs and snatches.
I worked with different producers from all genres, trying to bridge different styles of music, from urban to electronica to ballads.
