Originally Posted by MusicStudent
You guys are killin me with this spin...
How about Johnny Cash's "But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die":... Not a very pretty picture there.
Yep, and it ignores the part about objecting to songs that advocate violence.

According to Cash, this is how he came up with the line:
Originally Posted by Wikipedia
Cash recounted how he came up with the line "But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die": "I sat with my pen in my hand, trying to think up the worst reason a person could have for killing another person, and that's what came to mind."

You could argue that the cheering prisoners after Cash sang that line were advocating violence, but that didn't actually happen:
Originally Posted by Wikipedia
According to Michael Streissguth, the cheering from the audience following the line "But I shot a man in Reno / just to watch him die" was added in post-production. According to a special feature on the DVD release of the 2005 biopic Walk the Line, the prisoners avoided cheering at any of Cash's comments about the prison itself, fearing reprisal from guards.

Since I'm deep into trivial I'll note that Cash didn't write the opening lines of the song, the melody of the song, and a quite a number of other lines. They were lifted from Gordon Jenkin's Crescent City Blues. That ended up costing Cash $75,000 in payment to Jenkins. Mind you, Cash never really claimed he wrote it:
Originally Posted by faroutmagazine.co.uk
So, how did this very liberal appropriation come to pass? Well, Cash was rattling off some tunes in an audition/recording session when Sun Records founder Sam Phillips thought his ears had just detected a hit. Cash promptly informed him that he had merely tweaked a track from 1953, and Phillips assured him that a ‘tweak’ was enough.

Cash later honestly stated: “At the time, I really had no idea I would be a professional recording artist; I wasn’t trying to rip anybody off.” His stance was simply that he had essentially upscaled an old cover like an endless stream of folk artists in every bar ever.

But back to power ballads... Does Harry Nilsson's "Without You" count? Because that song is awesome.

Whaddya mean "It's not rock?" wink

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?