contemporary r&b ballads: rubbish compared to the good old days

as a result, only idiots now write ballads

(Nick A., how can a song w.that title be a BALLAD?)

cheers! i clearly am a fool

(p.s. new r kelly album dropping soon. working title: "chocolate factory"!! eww.)

Like I think the shift to texture is a great thing and the rhythmic innovation is fantastic -- like what about nep beats like ll's "gonna love you better" which I don't think are that innovative coz I hear them in lotsa slow stuff these days and it fucking rocks.

* certainly without resorting to a load of bollocks about 'soul' and 'emotion'.

maybe its *craft* - the great smokey robinson ballads had clearly been sweated over to get every word and nuance absolutely spot on and i don't really hear people taking that kind of care anymore.

not that it matters that much, but i'd be great to have a chart full of great slow songs as well as great fast ones.

"U Got It Bad" is ballad of the year so far. "Feelin' On Your Booty" is, well, R. Kelly being himself. (Remember "Bump 'N Grind"? "Sex Me"? "On The Down-Low"? "You Remind Me Of My Car"?)

make that three!

and if we allow 'creep' then i've nearly reached five.

Also, the death of the extended metaphor is part of the problem. Now it's all telling, no showing. This was the case in some '60s ballads, but it seemed many of them were willing to set up a scene, not just wax on about how much I miss her so, etc.

how slow does something have to be to be a ballad? I was taking ballad to mean love song. that is one definition.

maybe its *craft* - the great smokey robinson ballads had clearly been sweated over to get every word and nuance absolutely spot on and i don't really hear people taking that kind of care anymore.

craft now = using pro-tools to extract the two or three best lines (or words!) per take and suture them together into a song. (nb: this is not a value judgment on my part.)

staggeringly OTM.

actually, i think you've just solved it for me yancy, and i can now bugger off to the pub a happy man.

I really think that the bump & grind ballads are great these days though -- i LOVE the over-the-topness.

Also whatabout "braid my hair" by Mario or "dilemma"?

Extended metaphors bite anyway -- they require a traditional notion of song structure.

How so?

I think there is a specific post-Diane Warren style that is still bafflingly popular in the second-half of records and must be purged - all that sexless, asynine sweetness (plus its good production is wasted by always using the same sounding chords!). Other than that R&B ballads are great.

The last really great thing Babyface did was the "Waiting To Exhale" soundtrack, and even there the Whitney song was one of the worst things on Earth. (Thank God for Mary J and Brandy, otherwise that soundtrack would have been a shambles.)

for good modern ballads i'd go for D'Angelo's 'Untitled' and Kelis' 'Get Along With You' tho maybe that doesnt count

cf. his stuff on Crazysexycool, which is just so crisp and effervescent (those snare fills on "Diggin' On You" are heavenly) while at the same time thick and sexy. Another ballad I love for similar reasons is Pink's "Let Me Let You Know", though her largely divaesque performance is the antithesis of TLC. En Vogue are usually pretty great too - everything on Funky Divas is class obviously, but I particularly liked the ballads near the end of their last album Masterpiece Theatre - namely "Work It Out" and "Number One Man" - sexy and mature in the best possible sence.

Ooh yeah and Missy's "Friendly Skies"!!!

The irony I find is that the artists (and not just in R&B, but definitely there too) who put the most effort towards implying some level of artistry, craft and traditional lineage are usually the most tepid and boring.

Does R Kelly strive to imply that his music is artless, craftless and rootless?

One can not strive for something without striving for the opposite. However, declaring in song that "Only The Loot Can Make Me Happy" sounds at the very least like art, craft and sense of history matter little to senor 12-Play.

partly this is also indicative of a transformation in our notion of romance, i think -- or rather in racial representations of it. Modern smooth "white suit" r&b is a direct result of the civil rights movement carving out a broader social niche and cultural influence for e. franklin frazier's so-called "black bourgiouse" while the classic stuff was still a product of a post-reconstruction "race music" ethos to some degree. Which is to say that romance and getting nasty are more distinct forms while prior there was no cultural room for this seperation. Which is not to say that groups don't do both, like 112 for example.