When I first came up with the concept to determine the best power ballad of all time two years ago, I had no idea how much work this would be. It seemed so simple! Come up with a list, seed the entries and play it through to the end. But to make this meaningful, it required countless hours of research listening to hundreds of songs to even come up with a list based on a criteria that I had to develop. Arriving that the 64 songs that were deemed worthy was a tremendous step forward.
Beyond that, it was not difficult to group songs as to whether they should be 1-4, 5-8, 9-12 or 13-16 seeds. But to comb through lyrics to figure out what the bracket names should be and which entries should be in which brackets took a weekend. Then to make sure that artists did not have too many seeds in a single bracket was more effort. Even once I settled on bracket, I decided to walk away from it for a few days to clear my head. Then I came back to it and made adjustments before publishing.
This series of blog entries has been very satisfying to write. Just like my cereal blog, it allowed me to remember something that was meaningful from my younger years. In the case of music, I would argue that people are most impressionable from preteen to high school graduation. For me, the music from this era is still my jam and will be for life just like Booker T & the M G 's - Green Onions is for my dad. This was always about the journey, no pun intended!
CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH UP
The final match up features the #1 seed, Survivor - The Search Is Over out of the Full of Regret region against the #4 seed, 4 Chicago - Look Away, out of the Love Hurts region.
Here is one final sound clip from each song.
If you need a reminder of how we got here, the entire tournament bracket with results are below.
CHAMPIONSHIP HIGHLIGHTS
I am sorry Chicago. I found someone else. So for you, I guess it's over, baby. It's really over baby, whoa. But don't worry. If we see you walking by, and the tears are in your eyes, we will just look away.
For Survivor, this was not an easy outcome to determine. Look Away put up a tough fight till I came to my senses, through some miracle of fate. You should have known from the start.
The Search Is Over. How can I convince you what you see is real? You were with me all the while as the best power ballad of all time.
WINNER
Survivor - The Search Is Over
NEXT UP?
NEXT UP?
My next project will be to rank the 10 best John Hughes movies of all time! Stay tuned.