3 Rock Ballads From 1986 That Every 80s Kid Can’t Stop Singing

The ballad originated as a poem to be sung. But also as a song you could dance to. You’ll notice the word “ball” inside the word, as in a social dance. I tell you this not for the English lesson, but for a music lesson. The emotion in popular ballads has its DNA in dramatic stanzas. And slow songs have been bringing people together to dance for centuries.

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So we continue this long tradition of slower, earnest tunes just as every 80s kid can’t stop singing—and I imagine dancing to—these classic rock ballads from 1986.

“Amanda” by Boston

I remember hearing this song as a kid and wondering, “Who’s Amanda?” It turns out that she’s no one in particular. Guitarist Tom Scholz chose the name because it sang well. But Scholz had toiled with the ballad for years before it appeared on Boston’s third album, suitably named Third Stage. However arduous the process must have been, you don’t hear any struggle in the pillowy production. Both the sky-high chorus and the meticulous guitar solos are built for the arena. Still, for all the real Amandas out there, they’ll always have this power ballad that was inspired by no one, thus making it suitable for everyone sharing the name.

“Like A Rock” by Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band

Before it became a song to sell sturdy trucks, Bob Seger’s heartland ballad had a much different emotion attached to it. “Like A Rock” describes fading youth. How one, broke and skinny, could still feel like a million bucks. Seger glimpses his past, his hopes, and a time before dreams fade into a ghost of an idea. We’ve all felt how quickly time disappears. It can feel like a cruel joke. You shift from feeling bored to asking where the decades have gone. “Twenty years,” he says, “I don’t know.” I don’t judge anyone for licensing their music to an ad. I’ve done it too. But the downside and the unfortunate trade-off is how many listeners miss the song’s original sentiment.

“Who Wants To Live Forever” by Queen

Brian May wrote “Who Wants To Live Forever” for the 1986 fantasy film, Highlander. It appears on Queen’s A Kind Of Magic, and this isn’t so much a power ballad as it’s a power epic. It’s so perfectly over the top even by Queen’s standards. Michael Kamen conducts the orchestra, which swells amid synthesizers and Freddie Mercury’s lamentation about how immortals must endure the anguish of always outliving their loved ones. Mercury’s operatic voice doesn’t shrink against the orchestra. Instead, it ricochets off the bodies of the sky, like a grief-stricken deity. The pain of eternal life is matched only by the relentless misery of watching others die. A kind of magic indeed.

Photo by David Redfern/Redferns