What 'Power Ballad' says about art

By Linda Holmes

If you were to divide the total number of bands there have ever been by the total number of hits there have ever been, it would be clear that most bands have never had a single hit. That means if you’re a one-hit wonder, you’ve really been highly, highly successful. A single hit is a near miracle.

In Power Ballad, Rick Power (Paul Rudd) is a loving husband and father who sings in a good wedding band people really like. He once had a pop band and a record deal — he even toured, which is how he came to Ireland, met a woman, married her, had a daughter with her, and made his life there. He continues to make a living as a performing musician who makes people happy, which, again, qualifies him as more successful than he perhaps gives himself credit for.

At a wedding, he meets Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), who used to be in a boy band and is trying to get a solo career off the ground. He and Rick see something kindred in each other, and they end up spending the night drinking and playing music and talking about songs they’re working on. Rick plays him an unfinished ballad called “How To Write A Song Without You.”

Nick Jonas and Havana Rose Liu in Power Ballad. / David Cleary/Lionsgate

A few months later, Rick is at the mall when he hears “How To Write A Song Without You” playing. As it turns out, Danny finished the song by adding a bridge, brought it to his people as his own, and has released it as a single. When Rick reaches out for credit, Danny denies everything (through his management). Rick has no proof that he wrote it. He sets out, with increasing intensity, to confront Danny.

This story is, in part, about credit and money. That could seem like an incongruous direction for director and co-writer John Carney, who previously made beloved, big-hearted films like Once and Sing Street that are also about musicians, but where credit and money are beside the point.

The film isn’t really about credit and money, though. It’s about the fact that Rick has been working in music for decades and has never produced, for himself or the people he loves, much hard evidence that he’s good. Maybe that kind of hard evidence isn’t even a thing. Artistic success is hard to define, but Rick has never even gotten far enough to split those hairs. But now, suddenly, there is this (maddeningly unreliable) indicator of quality: He wrote a monster hit. He wrote a song people love. It’s easy to talk about wanting credit as if there’s something small or grimy about it, especially when money is involved. But if Rick wanting credit is grimy, then surely Danny denying him credit is doubly so.

Danny, for his part, is less a villain than a coward. His public image is souring, and he’s got a slimy manager (played by Jack Reynor, who deserves bad things here just as much as he did in Midsommar and The Perfect Couple) threatening to drop him. So when his girlfriend (Havana Rose Liu) overhears him noodling around with Rick’s song, misunderstands it to be his, and loves it, he can’t resist. The script cleverly includes the complicating detail that Danny did finish the song by writing the bridge, so it’s not as if he didn’t contribute anything. It’s a song they both worked on; it’s just that by the time Rick is trying to get things straightened out, it’s much too late for Danny to admit that he lifted the song from a middle-aged wedding singer and lied about it.

By the end, Power Ballad has said some pretty profound things about art, including a warning that shortcuts are unsatisfying. Danny achieves huge commercial success with “How To Write A Song Without You,” but he has guaranteed that performing the song will always feel empty. Why? Because he’s pretending. He didn’t write the song, and he doesn’t even understand the song.

Danny wants to be a star, and he knows how to get what stars have. He has what it takes. But he also wants to perform a song and know that it came from him, that it is of his heart and mind, and that it is good. He is a talented performer who got greedy, and he decided he had to have what songwriters have. Ending a songwriting experience with money and recognition isn’t a requirement. But beginning it with your own brain is. Otherwise, you simply cannot have what songwriters have, no matter how many stadiums you play.

And while this isn’t a movie about AI, it’s safe to assume that if trying to take credit for a song somebody else wrote won’t truly satisfy, taking credit for a song no human being wrote won’t either. In fact, if Danny’s experience says anything, it’s that a good song may not have come from you, but at least it came from somebody. Somebody cared about the making of it, even if it was somebody else. After all, plenty of very good performers don’t write their own songs, which is fine — unless you fib about it.

It’s a terrific movie; the leads are both very good and perfectly cast. The song that is supposed to be a huge pop hit is a very plausible pop hit, which isn’t always how it goes. The ending is satisfying but bittersweet, like pretty much every ending Carney has ever made. Ultimately, Power Ballad posits that in art, as in life, it should matter if you’re honest. It should matter if you did what you say you did. And perhaps too optimistically, it suggests that a genuine one-hit wonder is likely happier than a superstar who’s lying.

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