Lyric of the Week: ROCKTROPIA—A SUITE IN 4 MOVEMENTS (2)

II. ADAGIO: POWER BALLAD

Can’t you see, oh can’t you see

That we’re living in a world of confusion

The mountains, they crumble to the sea

But we’re living a life of illusion

In this ever-changing world

I need something to keep me stable

Save me, oh save me now, girl

Let’s lay all our cards on the table

I wanna be with you, don’t wanna be by myself

I need your love, don’t put me on a shelf

Tonight, tonight, it feels so right

I swear I’ll take you to paradise

I want to hear your sweet voice until the morning light

To win your love, I’ll pay any price

Look at me, look into my eyes and realize

You don’t have to carry that weight on your shoulders

Take my hand, and you’ll understand

We’ll rise from the ashes before we get older

My heart is on fire with a burning desire

I wanna wrap my arms around you

Girl I’m no liar, I wanna take you higher

Hope springs eternal, you know it’s bound to

I wanna get next to you, I need you by my side

Please, please, baby, don’t you go run and hide

Tonight, tonight, we’ll make it right

We’ll make it all the way to heaven

We’ll go out of the darkness and into the light

We’ll turn up the volume all the way to eleven

With the power of love and the power of music

We’ll set an open course and sail away

With the power of rock and the power of ballads

Come on and slip away, let’s steal away

Tonight, tonight, we’ll be all right

We can be like Romeo and Juliet

We’ll take these broken wings and fly into the light

Where we can be who we are and have no regret

Tonight, tonight, it all sounds trite

But we can rise above it all

We’ll sing all these words we managed to write

And for once, we’ll break the fourth wall

©2024 The Hesh Inc.

Romeo and Juliet on a shelf ... two clichés for the price of one.

Sometime in the mid-2000s, after hearing the expression "ever-changing world" and the "self/shelf" rhyme in one too many songs, I began collecting a list of common, overused expressions in rock and pop songs. I thought that eventually I would assemble them all into a song, but it became clear that they would require more than one song, because of the sheer number of them as well as the variety of rock/pop subgenres that these expressions are overused in. After sitting unfinished in one of my old notebooks for more than a decade, I did a little more research and collected more such expressions, and then created a whole four-part suite out of them ... itself a cliché.

This is the second part, which, in true symphony mode, turns inward after the exuberance of the first movement—from the over-the-top uptempo of the "Rock'n'Roll Overture" to a slower, but equally as bombastic power ballad. All the hallmarks of the classic power ballad are here, from the lyrical tropes to the verse-prechorus-chorus-repeat-bridge-modulation-big finish structure. You can just hear the gooey electric piano intro and first verse building up to the power chords of the chorus. See how many lyrical tropes you can count ... and keep in mind that none of it needs to make sense.