Have you ever thought: “I like Meatloaf but he seems awfully restrained. Why doesn’t he CUT LOOSE SOMETIME!!! Why must he be continually shackled by the diktats of good taste.”
Let me introduce you to Desmond Child.
American-Hungarian-Cuban Child enters the popular conscious by writing:
Pumping disco rock that is as catchy as the measles in an RFK-run nursery.
But wait. This is just the beginning.
Throughout the 80s, Child writes a series of total bangers for Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, and Dame Bonnie Tyler - e.g.
Listen to this and feel your ears grown suede tassels and cowboy boots. We’re more than half way there, Jon. We’re standing on the verge of getting it on.
Perhaps Childs’ work reaches its apotheosis in:
The drama here is off the charts. Love has progressed from being a “bad medicine” to actually being a “poison”. Someone get Child a job at the FDA. Nevertheless Alice Cooper “don’t want to break these chains”. Switching metaphors with the subtlety of rhino crashing the gears of a hummer, I’m not sure that chains are a recognized anti-toxin. But probably more romantic than taking an emetic.
Utterly ridiculous. Utterly listenable.
Child is the Patron Saint of the Power Ballad - a genre as successful and lucrative as it is despised by the cognoscenti. The PB has loud guitars that solo - and is therefore acceptable to dudes. At the same time, it is slower and has lyrics that bend romantic - and is therefore acceptable to the laydeez. Man and woman, dude and chick brought together, lighters waving in perfect harmony.
Obviously the PB is also camp AF. That doesn’t make it unheterosexual. But it may be related to Child’s late 70s confessional "The Truth Comes Out” that is not about him taking an emetic to counteract some poisoning.
I do wonder if the power ballad has suffered as sexual mores have become more relaxed. Men showing their feminine side and women getting their rock on are far less charged matters than they were in the 80s. Although the resurgent conservative gender backlash may revive the power ballad as a cultural form. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we see JD Vance and Patrick Deneen crooning a tortured duet in studded leather.