ABSTRACT
The black pop ballad of the mid- to late 1980s had been dominated by a vocal and production style that was smooth and polished, led by singers Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, and James Ingram. Black ballads, like most of pop music, rely on the verse-chorus opposition: the verses provide information and develop the images, while the chorus offers the lyrical and musical hook, usually featuring the song's title. This chapter introduces the repertory of the black ballad, from 1991 to 1995, taking excerpts from selected songs in order to illustrate the formal and expressive conventions of ballad singing. The songs are grounded in common popular music forms, but in performance style are also indebted to specifically African-American musical practices, particularly gospel music. Wedded to contemporary grooves and modern marketing techniques, ornamentation became a more dominant feature in American popular singing than it had ever been.
