Take the passion of rock, add some power, and you've got the rock ballad. Time Life proudly presents Ultimate Rock Ballads, a collection of the greatest singers and most powerful rock ballads of the '70s and '80s. Featuring Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Styx, Rod Stewart, REO Speedwagon, and many more! 153 hits in all!
ABOUT THIS ERA:
The power ballad found its origin in the late '70s and hit the peak of popularity in the mid '80s. Fueled by arena bands like Foreigner and Journey, guitar riffs and pounding drums were combined with careful orchestration and soft rock lyrics to produce the power ballad. These sentimental ballads with hard rock roots feature acoustic guitars, keyboards and subdued electric riffs. Both tender and tough, the power ballad resonated with fans of clasic rock, heavy metal, and glam rock alike, and enjoyed mainstream commercial appeal that was oh-so appropriate for the musical landscape of the '70s and '80s.
9 CDs total & 1 Collector's Box
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Ultimate Rocks Ballads: Burning Heart
Survivor: Eye of the Tiger * Foreigner: I Want to Know What Love Is * REO Speedwagon: Time for Me to Fly * Bad Company: Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy * The Pretenders: I'll Stand by You * Alice Cooper: Only Women. 32 songs in all!
Ultimate Rocks Ballads: Burning Heart
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Track
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Title
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Artist/Composer
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Time
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1
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Eye of the Tiger
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Survivor
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3
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I Want to Know What Love Is
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Foreigner
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4
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If You Leave Me Now
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Chicago
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6
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How Much I Feel
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Ambrosia
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8
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Over My Head
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Fleetwood Mac
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9
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Lucky Man
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Emerson, Lake & Palmer
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11
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Black Velvet
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Alannah Myles
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12
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Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)
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Phil Collins
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13
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Ready for Love
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Bad Company
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14
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Time for Me to Fly
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REO Speedwagon
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16
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You and Me
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Alice Cooper
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Ultimate Rocks Ballads: Burning Heart
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Title
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Artist/Composer
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Time
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1
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Feels Like the First Time
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Foreigner
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2
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Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy
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Bad Company
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5
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I'll Stand by You
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The Pretenders
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6
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Black Water
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The Doobie Brothers
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7
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Only Women
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Alice Cooper
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8
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Sea of Love
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The Honeydrippers
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9
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When the Children Cry
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White Lion
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10
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Never Tear Us Apart
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INXS
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12
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Ride Like the Wind
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Christopher Cross
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14
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Don't Close Your Eyes
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Kix
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15
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Dream Weaver
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Gary Wright
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16
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At This Moment
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Billy Vera & the Beaters
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Ultimate Rock Ballads: These Dreams
Tina Turner: What's Love Got to Do with It * John Waite: Missing You * Pat Benatar: Love Is a Battlefield * Cutting Crew: (I Just) Died in Your Arms * Steve Miller: Fly Like and Eagle. 19 songs in all!
Ultimate Rock Ballads: These Dreams
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Title
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Artist/Composer
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Time
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1
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What's Love Got to Do with It
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Tina Turner
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3
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If This Is It
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Huey Lewis and the News
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5
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Baker Street
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Gerry Rafferty
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6
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You're No Good
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Linda Ronstadt
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7
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Lonesome Loser
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Little River Band
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8
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Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone)
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Glass Tiger
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9
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Love Is a Battlefield
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Pat Benatar
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10
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(I Just) Died in Your Arms
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Cutting Crew
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11
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Fly Like an Eagle
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Steve Miller
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13
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Just between You and Me
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April Wine
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14
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Eyes without a Face
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Billy Idol
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15
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Love Stinks
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J. Geils Band
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16
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Silent Lucidity
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Queensrÿche
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17
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When I'm with You
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Sheriff
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18
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Every Time I Think of You
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The Babys
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Ultimate Rock Ballads: The Flame
Journey: Open Arms * Toto: Rosanna * REO Speedwagon: Keep on Loving You * Billy Joel: Piano Man * Boston: More Than a Feeling * Blue Oyster Cult: (Don't Fear) The Reaper * The Bangles: Eternal Flame. 32 songs in all!
Ultimate Rock Ballads: The Flame
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Title
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Artist/Composer
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Time
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1
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Miracles
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Jefferson Starship
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2
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Broken Wings
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Mr. Mister
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5
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The One That You Love
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Air Supply
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6
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Keep On Loving You
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REO Speedwagon
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8
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Total Eclipse of the Heart
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Bonnie Tyler
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9
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Heaven in Your Eyes
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Loverboy
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10
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Oh Sherrie
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Steve Perry
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11
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Everytime You Go Away
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Paul Young
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13
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The Air That I Breathe
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The Hollies
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14
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Love of a Lifetime
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Firehouse
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15
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Almost Paradise…Love Theme from Footloose
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Mike Reno and Ann Wilson
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16
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All by Myself
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Eric Carmen
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Ultimate Rock Ballads: The Flame
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Title
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Artist/Composer
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Time
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1
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More Than a Feeling
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Boston
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2
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(Don't Fear) The Reaper
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Blue Öyster Cult
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5
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Living inside Myself
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Gino Vannelli
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6
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We Just Disagree
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Dave Mason
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7
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Hungry Eyes
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Eric Carmen
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9
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Paradise by the Dashboard Light
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Meat Loaf
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11
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All the Young Dudes
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Mott the Hoople
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12
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Close My Eyes Forever
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Lita Ford (with Ozzy Osborne)
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13
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Can't Get It Out of My Head
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Electric Light Orchestra
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14
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The Final Countdown
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Europe
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15
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Take It on the Run
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REO Speedwagon
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Ultimate Rock Ballads: Love Hurts
Styx: Lady * The Moody Blues: Nights in White Satin * The Allman Brothers Band: Melissa * Simple Minds: Don't You (Forget about Me) * Elton John: Tiny Dancer. 32 songs in all!
Ultimate Rock Ballads: Love Hurts
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Time
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1
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Harden My Heart
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Quarterflash
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2
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Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me
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Elton John
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4
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Nights in White Satin
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The Moody Blues
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5
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Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy
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Sammy Hagar
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6
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Wind of Change
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Scorpions
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8
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Melissa
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The Allman Brothers Band
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9
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More Than Words
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Extreme
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11
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Don't You (Forget about Me)
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Simple Minds
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12
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I Can Dream about You
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Dan Hartman
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13
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You Belong to the City
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Glenn Frey
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15
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Sister Christian
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Night Ranger
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16
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Do You Feel Like We Do
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Peter Frampton
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Ultimate Rock Ballads: Love Hurts
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Title
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Artist/Composer
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Time
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2
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If I Could Turn Back Time
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Cher
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3
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Can't Fight This Feeling
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REO Speedwagon
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6
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Up Where We Belong
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Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes
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7
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Fooled Around and Fell in Love
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Elvin Bishop
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9
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Rocky Mountain Way
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Joe Walsh
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10
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Second Chance
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38 Special
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11
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In a Big Country
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Big Country
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12
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(Can't Live without Your) Love and Affection
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Nelson
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13
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Sentimental Street
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Night Ranger
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14
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Midnight Rider
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Gregg Allman
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15
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Baby, I Love Your Way
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Peter Frampton
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16
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Free Bird
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Lynyrd Skynyrd
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Ultimate Rock Ballads: High Enough
Pat Benatar: We Belong * Whitesnake: Is This Love * Mr. Big: To Be with You * Meat Loaf: I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) * Boston: Amanda * Yes: Owner of a Lonely Heart. 18 songs in all!
Ultimate Rock Ballads: High Enough
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Title
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Artist/Composer
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Time
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1
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Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now
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Starship
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2
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The Search Is Over
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Survivor
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4
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Is This Love
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Whitesnake
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6
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I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)
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Meat Loaf
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8
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When I See You Smile
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Bad English
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10
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Midnight Blue
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Lou Gramm
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11
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Owner of a Lonely Heart
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Yes
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13
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High Enough
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Damn Yankees
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14
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Every Rose Has Its Thorn
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Poison
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15
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More Than Words Can Say
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Alias
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16
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Waiting for a Girl Like You
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Foreigner
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Ultimate Seventies: 1978
Queen: We Are the Champions * Patti Smith Group: Because the Night * Warren Zevon: Werewolves of London * Chic: Le Freak * Steely Dan: Peg * Meat Loaf: Two Out of Three Ain't Bad. 20 songs in all!
Ultimate Seventies: 1978
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9
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Peg
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Steely Dan
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3:58
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1978
By 1978, disco music had been garnering occasional crossover hits, but Chic's Le Freak was the first by a black group to inject elements of rock into the idiom and make it truly hip. The single wound up selling four million copies. The masterminds behind Chic were Bernard Edwards (who played bass) and Nile Rodgers (guitar). They met while jamming in New York City jazz clubs in 1970, and by 1972 had formed a fusion trio called the Big Apple Band, which took its sense of theatricality from Britain's Roxy Music. In 1976, they formed Allah and the Knife-Wielding Punks, a male and female punk-rock outfit that went nowhere fast and promptly disbanded.
Rodgers and Edwards moved toward disco not because they liked the music but because it seemed like the only way for blacks to win a recording contract. They adopted an international, high-fashion approach that they felt would prevent them from being racially pigeonholed. Their demo was rejected by every label in New York before Atlantic president Jerry Greenberg took a personal interest and signed them.
By the time the single Le Freak was released, Chic had settled into a three-man, two-woman format augmented by studio musicians. This record took a popular gay-disco-rap phrase and turned it into slang, gave it an international flavor and created a new dance craze. Their minimalist sound--guitar/bass interplay, scratchy funk-pop guitar lines, a wash of strings and female voices that only seemed half there--became so popular that Rodgers and Edwards became one of New York's hottest production teams for black and white artists.
The Bee Gees had written a tune called Night Fever that seemed a perfect fit for the John Travolta disco movie, Saturday Night Fever, produced by their manager Robert Stigwood. But Stigwood thought the title sounded pornographic. He had heard the group perform a song in Bermuda called Saturday Night, Saturday Night, which evolved into Stayin' Alive. Manager and band decided to combine the "Saturday Night" title with the name of the new song and call the film Saturday Night Fever. By the end of the year, it was one of the biggest grossing movies in history. The Bee Gees set new records for producing No. 1 hits for themselves and for other Stigwood acts such as Yvonne Elliman.
Mike Chapman was another producer who had a good year in 1978. The Australian had been best known for collaborating with producer Nicky Chinn on recordings by British glam-rock stars such as Suzi Quatro (actually an American expatriate), Sweet, Gary Glitter and Mud. In 1975 he moved to Los Angeles, where he came across a demo tape by a Kentucky band called the Exiles. Liking what he heard, Chapman scouted the group at the grand opening of an apartment complex in Lexington, Kentucky. He changed their name to Exile and gave them Kiss You All Over, which he described as a crass pastiche of soft rock and middle-of-the-road pop, with a fashionable snatch of disco.
Chapman also produced Nick Glider's Hot Child in the City. Glider, a veteran of the Canadian band Sweeney Todd, had moved to L.A., where he noticed many young prostitutes and their pimps on Hollywood Boulevard. But he was unable to turn his tale of a streetwise Lolita into an effective song until he rewrote it from the point of view of an aging lecher.
Not all music in 1978, however, was influenced by disco. Eccentric L.A. musicians managed unprecedented commercial success. Steely Dan--by now consisting of Donald Fagen, Walter Becker and various studio musicians--had their first platinum album with Aja, which yielded three hit singles, including Peg. Warren Zevon set himself apart from the wave of Hollywood singer-songwriters by writing tough, skewed songs on complicated subjects. Linda Ronstadt cut two of his tunes in 1976 and two more in 1977. His friend Jackson Browne persuaded the one-time bandleader for the Everly Brothers to return from Spain, where he was living, and record a solo album in 1976. Browne produced Zevon's critically acclaimed debut, put it wasn't until 1978 that the singer-pianist reached a mass audience with Werewolves of London.
Randy Newman, the nephew of Alfred and Lionel Newman, who scored music for numerous films, had been writing hits for others since the early '60s, and had recorded his own debut album in 1968 when he was a staff arranger at Warner Brothers. His cynical, insightful tunes--invariably about winners who end up losing and losers who end up winning--were melodic, artfully arranged and rife with hooks, but they were hardly pop fare. Short People was meant to satirize bigotry, a perennial Newman theme which had been growing in importance for him, as evidenced by his 1974 ode to the South, Good Old Boys. Short People, like much of his material, was widely misunderstood--and the object of angry boycotts. But the average-height (5 feet, 11 inches) Newman neither apologized for the song nor tried to exploit the new audience it attracted.
Patti Smith, the queen of the New York City punk scene, was another unlikely hit-maker. Smith, a poet and rock critic who had collaborated with playwright Sam Shepherd, turned to music with an independent label single in 1974 and made her album debut with Horses the next year. Her streetwise mysticism, along with her appreciation for three chords and a big beat, sustained her underground reputation until she fell off the stage during a performance in Florida and was hospitalized in 1977. She recorded her next album, Easter, in a studio down the hall from Bruce Springsteen, himself still just a critic's darling. Smith's producer Jimmy Iovine introduced the two, and Springsteen gave her Because the Night, which she revised and parlayed into her first hit single. She then went into retirement until the late '80s. Ironically, this marked the first time the Boss' name reached the top 20.
Queen and Kansas had more in common than a cursory listen might indicate. The former were pre-punk Englishmen who combined glitter and metal with harmonies to create an arty arena-rock hybrid. We Are the Champions joined with We Will Rock You as a double-sided single that went platinum. Kansas was originally conceived as a marriage of Midwestern metal and English progressive rock, though by the time they recorded Dust in the Wind they had moved beyond Anglo-boogie into something they considered more metaphysical.
Many old and familiar sounds, too, were on the radio and the charts in 1978. With Use Ta Be My Girl, the O'Jays made their move from the topical songs back to romance; that summer, they celebrated their 20th anniversary with a show at L.A.'s Greek Theater. Eric Clapton wrote Lay Down Sally in the style of soft-country crooner Don Williams, with whom he formed a mutual admiration society. A modest country hit for Clapton, the single was covered by country singers Red Sovine and Jerry Paris. Joe Walsh, who had replaced guitarist Bernie Leadon in the Eagles just in time to add some overdue muscle to the group on its 1976 album, Hotel California, mocked superstar decadence with Life's Been Good. Speaking of which, even Rod Stewart admitted that his You're in My Heart was a calculated attempt to placate former lover Britt Ekland, who had filed a $12 million palimony suit against him. It worked, and once she withdrew the suit the cavalier Rod the Mod cheerfully claimed, "It wasn't totally about Britt . . . It could have been anybody I met in that period--and there were a lot of them."
--John Morthland
Ultimate Rock Ballads: Collector's Box
Your new rockin' CD collection will come in this special edition Ultimate Rock Ballads collector's box.
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