On Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog, readers recently selected songs for the Ultimate Cheesy Ballad Playlist. Here are some of the songs (in no particular order) that they feel will leave Velveeta stains all over your CD player/iPod/computer, etc.:Open Arms- Journey
Glory of Love- Peter Cetera
Could've Been- Tiffany
Lost In Your Eyes- Debbie Gibson
Mandy- Barry Manilow
Somewhere Out There- Linda Ronstadt & James Ingram
Crazy For You- Madonna
Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman- Bryan Adams
All My Life- K-Ci & Jo Jo
Against All Odds-Phil Collins
We're Going All the Way- Jeffrey Osborne
Iris- The Goo Goo Dolls
Hold On- Wilson Phillips
Are you suffering from an overdose of the dairy stuff yet? I never considered "Crazy For You" or "All My Life" as cheesy, but to each his/her own. I did notice that 6 of these songs came from movies. Cheesy ballads and Hollywood seem to go hand in hand.
For commentary on the songs selected (along with photos and "bonus tracks"), you can click on the link below to get to the first page:
Ultimate Cheesy Ballad Playlist
What songs would make up your playlist of cheesy ballads? What are your thoughts on the choices by the readers?
15 comments:
How about Whitney Houston's "And I-I-I-I- Will Always Love You"? Cheesy and nerve-wracking (smile).
Ack Mandy! I know you didn't mean to..but just by posting the song title I now have that song stuck in my head.
Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking!!!But I sent you away...Oh Mandy!
Pooh!
Wow. It's like someone just broke into my plastic box of cassette tapes. I have almost all of those songs. (Could've Been on 45) You know me, I'm a Cheese Meister. But I'be never been a Barry Manilow fan. Somewhere Out There was from that animated show with Fievel...and I remember a girl in our class trying to sing that at a talent show. It was really bad. Crazy for You and Glory of Love are my favorites...
I don't consider "Open Arms", "Crazy for You", "We're Going All the Way" or "Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman" at all cheesy...Go figure.
I love all these songs! Any Air Supply song should be on the list though.
Geez. I've performed six of those songs in various cover bands. I liked "Crazy for You," but didn't care much for the rest. Whatever. We get paid to play what people want to hear.
Lori: "I Will Always Love You" is not a bad choice. I will say that it is probably one of the songs that gets ruined the most at karaoke.
Mistress of the D: I hope you have recovered from Barry Manilow's unwarranted attack on your ears. I think that part of you secretly liked it. :-)
Holly: Even though my CD collection has its share of cheese, I have never cared much for Barry either.
Pjazzy: I'll have to see if "We're Going All the Way" is on the Jeffrey Osborne Best of CD that I have because I don't remember it. You could make a case for "You Should Be Mine" (The Woo Woo Song)" being on the cheesy ballad playlist.
Sandier Pastures: I refer to Air Supply as the Patron Saints of Guilty Pleasures. We might as well crown them the Kings of the Cheesy Ballad as well. I freely admit that I enjoy many of their tunes.
X. Dell: That's one of the things that would suck about playing in a cover band or being a club DJ. Drunk bar patron: Ooh, could you play (insert the name of any song that is probably overplayed and sucks as well)
He may be cheesy, but Barry Manilow is one of my favorite performers ever!!! I am a total Fanilow and have been since I was little and I think Mandy is a beautiful song. It's one of my all-time faves :)
Jessica
i used to have a playlist of what my one of my best friends referred to as the '80's cheese', but i loved it ~and a lot of the songs on your list were on my list.
Jessica: Now I never would have pegged you, the Rock Chick, as a Barry Manilow fan or "Fanilow" (I like that term by the way). But to me, everyone's music collection should have a certain amount of balance. In the "P" section of my CDs, I have The Partridge family among such critical faves as Wilson Pickett, The Police, and Public Enemy.
Gurl With Glasses: I'd love to see that cheesy song playlist you used to have. Sounds like it might be time to create a new one.
Malcolm, you've NEVER heard Jeff Osborne's "We're Going All The Way?" Say it aint so?! But if it is, you need to hurry up fix that (smile) Seriously, the radio stations in Memphis used to play the heck out of that.
hey malcolm! Ive been super incog lately but Im glad to be back!
No REO Speedwagon?
Lori: I put in Jeffrey Osborne's "Ultimate Collection" CD this morning and listened to "We're Going All the Way". It didn't ring any bells. I looked it up in the book "Top R&B/Hip Hop Singles 1942-2004 (an excellent book by the way) and saw that it hit #16 on the charts. Because of its chart showing, I would think that WDZZ in Flint played it (Pjazzy would probably know). It's funny though, because every now and then I will look up a song that got a lot of airplay on the local R&B stations and find that it didn't chart that high nationally. Conversely, I will see songs that charted very high that I don't recall hearing on the radio.
With all that being said, I thought it was an OK ballad... nothing that I would consider cheesy though.
Thembi: It's great to have you back! I was expecting to see you on the side of a milk carton during my next trip to the grocery store. :-)
REO Speedwagon rates inclusion on any cheesy ballad playlist in my opinion. They have a few to choose from, but I would go with "Can't Fight This Feeling".
Hey Malcolm,
Please don't mess with Jeffrey Osborne, he's is arguably my favorite male singer (I actually prefer him to Luther). "We're Going All the Way" was in heavy rotation on WDZZ in Flint and it is from the album "Baby Stay With Me Tonight", which was a bigger hit. Oh yeah, "The Woo Woo Song" was the jam!
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