Equipped with a 4-by-5 camera, Barnwell, who was himself raised in the area, combed the back roads of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee to find its tobacco farmers, quilt makers, ballad singers and molasses brewers not only to photograph but also to gather testimonies on a way of life that has been slow to change over the years.
"Santa Bring My Soldier Home," a soaring ballad produced by mega hit-maker Desmond Child (Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Ricky Martin, Katy Perry), is a tribute to all of the servicemen and women who can't be with their loved ones this holiday season.
The second single from Kylie Minogue (1994) saw its maker mastering the pop ballad.
The next song, "The Nothing Maker," supplies some yin to go with the yang: it's a ballad about a lover whose greatest asset seems to be his lack of creative ambitions, sung with a dreaminess that may be concealing a deeper venom.
Wave Maker Magazine viewed the song as "a darkly soothing, bass guitar-driven ballad which brings us back into cyberpunk country".
If film-makers were to reproduce, frame by frame, a faithful retelling of that earliest ballad, "Robin Hood and the Monk", audiences would be horrified.
Nick Levine of Digital Spy gave the song four out of five stars, and wrote that "What began life as a subdued-but-beautiful strings 'n' piano ballad is now a strident electropop tune that percolates as enviably as your next door neighbour's brand new coffee maker".
Two alleged Expo-related examples for you: the last-minute shelving of a song recorded for the Expo by Jackie Chan and others after netizens noticed its similarity to a 1997 Japanese ballad; and speculation that Haibao, the Expo mascot, is a rip-off of the logo of an eponymous Chinese white-goods maker.
Jerod Mayo sang a ballad.
"It's an Italian ballad".
