Sometimes, when the going gets tough, all you really need is a good power ballad to get you through. Here are a few that everyone can enjoy singing along to.
“I Want To Know What Love Is” by Foreigner
This one always gets me scream-singing at the top of my lungs. Written by Mick Jones, “I Want To Know What Love Is” might be a dramatic ballad, but it’s also a super vulnerable song if you look at the lyrics.
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At first, Jones was hesitant to show “I Want To Know What Love Is” to other people. Foreigner frontman Lou Gramm figured that this song “represented things in [Jones’] own life that he hadn’t been able to resolve, and he wasn’t too sure he wanted to have millions of people hear about it,” or so he told The Courier Journal.
It ended up becoming one of Foreigner’s biggest hits, perhaps for that exact reason.
“Purple Rain” by Prince
“Purple Rain” sings of trusting in love and God, even when it feels like the world is ending. This was Prince’s biggest hit, and also the song that Prince’s film of the same name centered around.
Written to be of the country genre at first, “Purple Rain” was supposed to be a collaboration with rock icon Stevie Nicks.
Nicks told NME of the offer, “I listened to it and I just got scared. I called him back and said, “I can’t do it. I wish I could. It’s too much for me.”
“How Do I Live” by LeAnn Rimes and Trisha Yearwood
Written by legendary hitmaker Diane Warren for the 1997 movie Con Air, “How Do I Live” became a big hit for not one but two artists: LeAnn Rimes and Trisha Yearwood. Yearwood got the song placement in the film, while Rimes, whose version was rejected by Disney executives, released her own, more pop-leaning version.
According to Yearwood, learning that Rimes was releasing her version was quite a surprise.
“The Nashville rule is, if somebody has a song on hold, you don’t record it,” she explained to Rolling Stone. “There’s this kind of gentlemen’s agreement that if somebody has it, you don’t mess with it. But in this case, I didn’t think she had any kind of permission to do that, so I wasn’t worried about it. Then I’m in Europe and I start to hear that (the Rimes version) has been released to radio. Then our version comes out, and it’s like it becomes this big battle between record labels.”
Photo by: Gary Gershoff/Getty Images
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