Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later North America, Australia and North Africa. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In t
he later 19th century it took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and the term is now often used as synonymous with any love song, particularly the pop or rock power ballad. Pop and rock ballads
To emphasize the emotional aspect of a power ballad, crowds customarily held up lit lighters. The most common use of the term ballad in modern pop music is for an emotional love song. When the word ballad appears in the title of a song, as for example in The Beatles's "The Ballad of John and Yoko" or Billy Joel's "The Ballad of Billy the Kid", the folk-music sense is generally implied. Ballad is also sometimes applied to strophic story-songs more generally, such as Don McLean's "American Pie". Power ballads
Simon Frith identifies the origins of the power ballad in the emotional singing of soul artists, particularly Ray Charles and the adaption of this style by figures such as Eric Burdon, Tom Jones and Joe Cocker to produce slow tempo songs often building to a loud and emotive chorus backed by drums, electric guitars and sometimes choirs. According to Charles Aaron, power ballads came into existence in the early 1970s, when rock stars attempted to convey profound messages to audiences. He argues that the power ballad broke into the mainstream of American consciousness in 1976 as FM radio gave a new lease of life to earlier songs like Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", Aerosmith's "Dream On", and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird". Other notable examples include Nazareth's version of "Love Hurts" (1975), Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is", Scorpions "Still Loving You", both from 1984, Heart’s "What About Love" (1985) and Whitesnake's "Is This Love" (1987).
