This is a lighthearted list feature from American Songwriter highlighting three power ballads from the 1990s that the writer argues surpass modern pop music in emotional intensity and vocal ability. The piece is nostalgic in tone, framing the decade's biggest hits as a lost art form of unabashedly dramatic songwriting that today's more restrained pop landscape rarely attempts.

The three songs picked are Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" (1996), Mariah Carey's "Hero", and the 1998 duet "When You Believe" by Carey and Whitney Houston. Each entry praises the singers' vocal power and the sweeping, melodramatic style of the era, with the writer suggesting only artists such as Ariana Grande come close to that level of performance today.