Ballad - definition: "song performed by boy band or aspiring member on Saturday evening reality television programme. Intended to generate sentimental scope to encompass wide market, including lachrymose teenagers and maternal dowagers by virtue of strained facial expression and imploring hand gestures. Pejorative term, prefixed by er, a or ooh, a.
See: opportunity for vocal virtuosity/replacement by wholly different tune and unmotivated octave shifts"

Gluester's Dictionary of Apocrypha, XL5 edition.