The Power Ballad
The power ballad, as it is affectionately known, signaled the end of an era. The 80’s music scene which had been started by the post punk movement is considered by many as the best era of popular music in history. Unfortunately, not quite sure why, but at the end of the decade everyone started getting sappy and the whole thing imploded on itself.
The excess of the 80’s were characterized by up tempo songs, great grooves and of course a hefty dose of debauchery.
In the mid-eighties bands wrote ballads to help pace their concert shows. The slower songs would give the band a chance to catch their breath during a live show. Somehow, likely not by chance, these slow songs caught on with fans and soon the Bic lighters were up in the air.
A power ballad in its sappiest form is like a soap opera, a litany of badness. It’s like that old server you have sitting in your computer room or that old piece of software that’s just running a few beats too slow. It’s that technology in your business that’s sentimental. It’s that technology that makes you want to put your lighter in the air and wave it like you just don’t care.
Business is meant to move forward. Business is about change. Those young punk rockers that were out to change the world started a great decade of music. The cycle started again in the nineties and the cycle continues today.
At the end of an era, when the power ballads start, it’s a trigger that your technology needs a refresh, that it’s time to install some new stuff, to put in the new sauce, to get things pumping again as your business starts its next cycle.
Always growing always changing. If you’re not moving forward you’re moving backwards there is no middle ground. You don’t drive the same car forever, you don’t keep the same cell phone forever, you don’t keep the same TV forever.
For the record — I would never tell anyone to spend money on something that they don’t need.
Technology today is moving at such a fast pace that the capital expenditure model (buying a piece of equipment and keeping it for years) just doesn’t make sense for small business anymore. It’s better to be nimble and be able to pivot — then to keep acquiring boat anchors.
Just remember… Every rose has it’s thorn
