It’s funny you should mention Barry Manilow. Back when lovers were encouraged to emulate “10”, making love to Ravel’s “Bolero”, Barry invented the ‘power ballad’—giving the lonely the same sort of extended, slowly-building music with which we could daydream about the lovers we didn’t have.
While writing the list, I was tempted to detour into the subset of ‘unpopular music for the lonely’—musicians who appealed to the lonely, but only made their loneliness greater due to the music’s wild unpopularity. I only included Barry Manilow and Air Supply as a compromise to that temptation, but there are many more—Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman were often derided by ‘hard’ rockers, as were James Taylor, Bread, Donovan, The Carpenters, Neal Diamond, et. al. Needless to say, they are all favorites of mine—and I suspect ten or twenty others will occur to me throughout the day, as my memories percolate up into my consciousness.
Good list, although I’m not sure about Barry Manilow. I’d add Freedy Johnston and the late, lamented Sandy Denny.
It’s funny you should mention Barry Manilow. Back when lovers were encouraged to emulate “10”, making love to Ravel’s “Bolero”, Barry invented the ‘power ballad’—giving the lonely the same sort of extended, slowly-building music with which we could daydream about the lovers we didn’t have.
While writing the list, I was tempted to detour into the subset of ‘unpopular music for the lonely’—musicians who appealed to the lonely, but only made their loneliness greater due to the music’s wild unpopularity. I only included Barry Manilow and Air Supply as a compromise to that temptation, but there are many more—Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman were often derided by ‘hard’ rockers, as were James Taylor, Bread, Donovan, The Carpenters, Neal Diamond, et. al. Needless to say, they are all favorites of mine—and I suspect ten or twenty others will occur to me throughout the day, as my memories percolate up into my consciousness.