Your absolute favourite ONE ballad ever, and I mean EVER!.... what is it?

Jaycee

Sound of Silence - Disturbed

SimonC

Wichita Leineman

Closely followed by Wild Horses.

EricTheWeary

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6i4l-LrVWwtXoP6uxa_QQc_rycRWGt_t&si=TF1qZzBOoeCd2Qa1

Not quite everything, it turned out to be a long winded process, but if you’ve got YouTube music and a desire to put your head down a toilet this’ll help. 

Rocker

Streets of London, Ralph McTell

Winny_Pooh

ICBM said:

Devil#20 said:

This song is absolutely brilliant and is typical of the brilliance and the connection that Neil has with music, life and history.

"Cortez the Killer"

Despite being a big Neil Young fan I’ve always disliked that song because the lyrics are total bollocks historically - the Aztecs were not a peaceful society at all.

If I had to pick Neil’s best ballad it would probably be Powderfinger.

From Hank to Hendrix is a good one

Brio

Interesting how many folk (me included) have a different definition of ballad. And funny how many can't understand the  concept of "Your absolute favourite ONE ballad ever". Numeracy ain't what it used to be.

Offset

SimonC said:

Closely followed by Wild Horses.

Presumably The Flying Burrito Brothers' version :-)

jonnyburgo

Neil Diamond - Holly Holy or Bangles - Eternal Flame

bloodandtears

SimonC said:

Wichita Lineman

That was my original thought.. but I decided on Sugar Mice by Marillion

Matt_McG

Frank Sinatra - Good-Bye     (from the Sings for Only the Lonely album ... or One for My Baby from the same album)

or, being innumerate

Tom Waits - Soldier's Things

or, still innumerate 

Betty LaVette - Let me Down Easy  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZT4GjzQyKc ) 

Danny1969

Nobody Home - Pink Floyd

ToneControl

Timcito said:

ToneControl said:

Timcito said:

"Just Like a Woman" - it shares something with "Nothing Compares 2 U" in that the 'speaker' seems barely able to contain the despair of loss. It's a beautiful song which managed to be beautiful even at a time when gay relationships were not seen as beautiful at all. Doesn't matter if you're gay or straight, it's heartbreakingly human and vulnerable. 

Do you mean the Bob Dylan song?

Yes.

I've read some online reviews and analysis, and I can't see any mention of this song and gay relationships, can you explain please?

Cranky

Offset said:

I have to add one more - Mighty Sparrow's 'Only A Fool Breaks His Own Heart'.

FTFY

JezWynd

Can a dirge be a ballad? If yes then this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Bau9pyeRk

Hootsmon

Move Closer

Jfingers

Screwing up my numeracy rating but  the full original version of Thin Line Man - Giant Sand

Play that in a pub. I double dare you!

beed84

For Crying Out Loud – Meat Loaf

gusman2x

Is this Love - Whitesnake

Timcito

ToneControl said:

Timcito said:

ToneControl said:

Timcito said:

"Just Like a Woman" - it shares something with "Nothing Compares 2 U" in that the 'speaker' seems barely able to contain the despair of loss. It's a beautiful song which managed to be beautiful even at a time when gay relationships were not seen as beautiful at all. Doesn't matter if you're gay or straight, it's heartbreakingly human and vulnerable. 

Do you mean the Bob Dylan song?

Yes.

I've read some online reviews and analysis, and I can't see any mention of this song and gay relationships, can you explain please?

"Just like a woman" - this was a time when Dylan chose his words carefully. Why "like" a woman if she is a woman? It would be a frivolous use of figurative language otherwise. 

In fact, the relationship seems marked by shame and furtiveness for the speaker:
It was raining from the first
And I was dying there of thirst
So I came in here
The imagery of rain and dying of thirst suggests the speaker is troubled (rain) and has unfulfilled desires (dying there of thirst). "So I came in here' suggests a place that he does not normally go; he has been driven by troubled urges.

The we get,

I can't stay in here

Ain't it clear that I just can't fit
Why can't he stay? What is it that he can't fit into? I think he may have resorted to the lover at a time when his natural passions got the better of his sense of propriety, and he allowed himself to indulge in a non-straight union. However, he is racked with doubt because he feels like a misfit, maybe both in the straight and the gay worlds. He refers to the 'world' of the lover a few lines later"
But when we meet again, introduced as friends
Please don't let on that you knew me when
I was hungry and it was your world
... A world that was 'other' to him, or at least a world that he kept himself from for respectability's sake. We also get the sense of shame here, and the sense of an appetite (hunger) that he could not resist. Why does he not want the lover to 'let on' if not that he is attempting to thrive in a heterosexual world, and the liaison with the lover might tarnish his reputation?

The description of their lovemaking seems to tie in with this sense of wanting to reconcile the sex he has had with this man with the norms he feels he should live by:
.Ah, you fake just like a woman
Yes, you do, you make love just like a woman
Yes, you do, then you ache just like a woman
But you break just like a little girl
It was not 'weird sex' after all! It was 'just like' having sex with a woman, so he can attempt to cling to his identity as an essentially straight man.

Each of these lines in itself may not add up to much, but taken together, I think they form a picture of a man who had a passionate but, for the time, illicit relationship with a man and is torn between his true self, which loves the man, and his need to 'fit,' to be a normal man in society with normal urges. 

What I find beautiful about the song is its truth and its compassion and the love that breaks through despite the speaker's attempts to suppress it. At the moment when he says,

And your long-time curse hurts
But what's worse is this pain in here
I can't stay in here

Ain't it clear that I just can't fit
Yes, I believe that it's time for us to quit
... there's a kind of climax of emotion and confusion in Dylan's voice, as though he's on the verge of breakdown before gaining control again on 'fit.' The speaker is all about control, and after this brief panicked and desperate moment, he is back on track again, and the song regains it rather sweet, lilting melody.

That's my 'reading' of this song, anyway. He may have been referring to acid, I guess, as many songs at the time about women did, but I think the other indications incline me more toward the gay relationship. 

Another thing I love about the song is the creation of a persona that is not Dylan, or at least seems not to be Dylan. He did it in "Don't Think Twice' when, on the surface, the speaker seems to be telling the woman that she should not feel bad about what's happened but cannot stop himself from blaming her for everything in the same breath! It's supreme artistry. At that time in his career - up to Blonde on Blonde - he stripped humanity bare in a way that puts him alongside the great poets for me. 

Dominic

It was a very good year .........Frank Sinatra