It’s the winter of 1984, and the juke box at the pizza parlor is blasting heavy hard rock. Kids huddle around their slices of pepperoni, sipping their sodas, fixing their feathered hair, and making sure their Izod shirt collars are turned up. But in between Led Zeppelin and REO Speedwagon, a slower song comes on. It’s not a rock song. But it’s not a light pop song either. It’s something different. It has some piano and even an acoustic guitar. Although hard to take at first, the lyrics carry an undeniable soulfulness and catchiness in them. The mood changes. Boyfriends and girlfriends steal kisses from one another. Girls melt at the sound of their favorite heartthrob’s voice.

In the 1980s, rock had drama - more specifically, melodrama - that came in the form of the power ballad. For just a few minutes, hair bands opened themselves up to a loving, more passionate side that had always been covered by their hard rock demeanors and personas. The power ballad allowed bands to take things down a notch and show the softer side of hard rock. At a Guns N’ Roses or Def Leppard concert, it was the power ballad that offered moments for audiences to sit down, take a breath, pull out a lighter, and wave it in the air. But the drama and power of these ballads seem lost or at least very much changed in music today.

So ladies and gentlemen, young and old, in memory of this lost form of music that so many of us had our first kisses to, we present our top ten list of power ballads…