Insomnia and A Top Five

Every now and then I get a little bout of insomnia. Tonight is one of those nights. I’m doing laundry, watching VH-1, and listening to my iTunes on Shuffle. First I watched Behind the Music-George Michael and now it’s VH-1 Goes Inside-Awesome Movie songs. The programming doesn’t get much better than that, does it? For those of you who aren’t familiar with iTunes, you can organize it by genres, artists, create play lists, or numerous other things. Shuffle will just let it pick out completely random songs anywhere in your library though. My iTunes just played What A Little Moonlight Can Do (Billie Holiday), then Total Eclipse of the Heart (Bonnie Tyler), and then Kashmir (Led Zeppelin). Apart from being totally confused by that odd mix my mind really got in to Total Eclipse of the Heart. It’s a perfectly constructed 80s power ballad. It’s a great song but still cheesy enough to remain in the 80s power ballad category. An example of a song that would no longer fit into that category is In Your Eyes (Peter Gabriel). Deep down it’s really a cheesy 80s power ballad but it’s on So, it’s Peter Gabriel, and it’s in that great scene in Say Anything and all of that makes it less cheesy than the song itself. So this brings me to that which I have been debating for the last twenty-seven minutes; what else goes into the 80s power ballad category? I’ve gone to great lengths and thought about this for quite some time so that I could share my opinions with you, my readers, on this very important topic. So here goes, I’m counting it down High Fidelity style: My Top Five Awesome 80s power ballads.

5. Sister Christian (Night Ranger)
4. We Belong (Pat Benatar)
3. Making Love Out of Nothing At All (Air Supply)
2. At This Moment (Billy Vera & The Beaters)
1. Total Eclipse of the Heart (Bonnie Tyler)