_Misty-eyed dreamers. Reluctant romantics. Doomed antiheroes. Heartbreakers, and the owners of the broken hearts. Whether protagonists in a grisly plot or narrators of an epic love, these are the sorts of folks who populate great ballads. In this songbook—named for the pivotal section of the thirty-two-bar form, or ballad form, where the lyric shifts and the music transcends—eight writers celebrate how these characters and composers, with their private confessions and messy motivations, reflect and transform the stories we tell—and sing—about ourselves.

_1. Radical Light
The cosmic collision of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway
by Ashawnta Jackson 

_2. Ballads by Request
Sid Hemphill and "The Strayhorn Mob"
by Jim O’Neal 

_3. Lost in Love
How “I Can't Make You Love Me” became a modern standard
by Annie Zaleski 

_4. Smile with the Sad
The hopeful melancholy of Project Pat's “Life We Live”
by Ben Dandridge-Lemco 

_5. The Only Exception
On Paramore and forgiving past selves
by Maggie Boyd Hare 

_6. Horse Girls
Death, ponies, and the Local Honeys
by Madeline Weinfield 

_7. Never Walk Alone
Aretha Franklin’s gospel as heartache’s balm 
by Noah T. Britton 

_8. Getting On
Madvillain’s “Accordion” and the double-bind of making it 
by Harmony Holiday