Saclike structures produced by fungi / WED 9-20-23 / Rowing machine informally / 2015 hit for little mix / 1986 hit for Steve Winwood / 1971 hit for the Carpenters / Footwear to knock around in / Slow rock song with an emotional vocal delivery / Onetime capital of Poland

Constructor: Gina Turner

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: POWER BALLAD (38A: Slow rock song with an emotional vocal delivery ... whose start can follow each half of 17-, 31-, 44- and 63-Across) — themers are all two-word songs ("ballads," in the broadest definition of the term) where both words can precede "POWER" in familiar (or familiar-ish) phrases:

Theme answers:

• "BLACK MAGIC" (17A: 2015 hit for Little Mix)
• "SUPERSTAR" (31A: 1971 hit for the Carpenters) 
• "ROCKET MAN" (44A: 1972 hit for Elton John)
• "HIGHER LOVE" (63A: 1986 hit for Steve Winwood (and a 2019 hit for Whitney Houston))

Word of the Day: Little Mix (17A) —

Little Mix are an English girl group, formed on the British version of The X Factor, and became the first group and only girl group to win the series. The line up consisted of Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Jade Thirlwall, Perrie Edwards, and previously Jesy Nelson, before her departure from the group in 2020. Regarded as the show's most successful winning act, their success lead [sic!] to a girl band renaissance in the UK. Little Mix are also recognised for their strong vocals, signature harmonies, and are ranked as one of the best vocal girl groups. In 2022, the group went on an indefinite hiatus, allowing its members to pursue solo projects.

Little Mix rose to prominence with their debut single "Wings" in 2012, eventually achieving five number-one singles, nineteen top ten enteries [sic!] and becoming the first girl band to spend over a 100 weeks inside the top ten of the UK Singles Chart. The group were launched into mainstream recognition following the release of "Black Magic", becoming the first song by girl group [sic!] since 2008 to spend multiple weeks at number one. It was ranked by Billboard as one of the "Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time". On the UK Albums Chart, Little Mix became the first girl group to have six consecutive top five entries, with their fourth studio album Glory Days, breaking chart records, and becoming the longest charting album by a girl group inside the 40 of the UK Charts. They have been named by Debrett's as one of the most influential people in the UK with a net worth of £60 million. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme type (where both "halves" of all the themers have to do ... something) is hard to pull off from start to finish, end to end, across the board, without some glitchy answer or some bit of strained fill. Today, the phrases themselves are all admirably tight and familiar, but once or twice the connection to the theme feels a little forced. Mostly, the answer "halves" do naturally precede the word "power." Black power, Superpower, Star power, great. I balked at "Magic power," which feels odd and slightly redundant and maybe not so great in the singular, and when you google it in quotation marks you get a forty-two-year-old rock song of no great repute, but ... ok, the more I look at it, the more normal it's seeming. Nevermind on that one. But "Love power"? What is ... "Love power"? I am familiar with "The Power of Love"—Huey Lewis and Michael J. Fox taught me about that back in the mid-80s. I know "Love Shack" and "Love Overboard" and a lotta love songs (including "Lotta Love" by Nicolette Larson), and a lotta love phrases (love potion, lovesick, love letter, etc.) but what is this "Love power" of which you speak? Hmm. I am getting an Idina Menzel song from "Disenchanted"? Question mark? That can't be it. What does the phrase mean? When I google [define "love power"], I get this, from Psychology Today:

Love of power is a compulsive need to control a significant other. The compulsion comes from deep-seated self-esteem issues, that won't let us believe that someone could just love us as-is. No, we have to make them stay, make them be faithful, make them love us, or they just won't.

I'm sure there's some explanation. I can imagine someone's saying "Love power" when they mean something roughly akin to "the power of love," but of all these eight song "halves," LOVE clanks the hardest, where its connection to POWER is concerned.

I also think "BLACK MAGIC" is a weird outlier here. Or ... just an outlier where my particular familiarity is concerned, because wow do I not know this song. It's hard to express the extent to which I don't know it. There are few songs I haven't known more than I don't know this one. Never heard of Little Mix before right now. This is a good example of the thing I was talking about the last time we had an all pop-song puzzle (so ... Sunday), where songs can be "hits" all they want, but if you didn't grow up with them or have them in your ears on a regular basis (harder for that to happen in today's highly culturally fragmented society), then they may as well not exist. This is all to say that I am way too old for that answer. I also don't really get bringing Whitney Houston back from the dead. She had a hit in 2019? After dying in 2012? That is ... some trick. Still don't get why she was added to that clue. [note: the song is credited primarily to somebody named KYGO, btw, so ... yeah, very confused here] Is the Whitney song more familiar to some people than the Steve Winwood song? Why wasn't Luther Vandross added to the clue for "SUPERSTAR"? He certainly had a discernible, real, famous hit with it. While living, even. Clearly there were lots of things to distract me today, lots of little things that didn't seem quite on the money ... which is what often happens with this theme type. Getting both halves of multiple familiar phrases to all do the same thing ... hard. Very hard. This puzzle does it reasonably well. I just ... have questions (see all of the above).

The NW corner was the hardest By Far, partly because it contained the heretofore unheard of Little Mix and their heretofore unheard of song "BLACK MAGIC," partly because the fill was repeatedly awful, and partly because I botched an answer very badly. Let's start with the last bit first—I ran into a completely unexpected kealoa* at 2D: Convinced about, where I had S---O- and confidently wrote in SUREOF. That's 50% of the puzzle's difficulty right there, just getting out of that stupid hole. SOLDON! It took way too much effort on my part to see that. Then there was ASCI, a piece of ollllld-time crosswordese that hasn't appeared in the NYTXW in nine years. That was a Saturday (and it was my Word of the Day—lotta good that did me)  [OMG ASCI (well, "Ascus") was also my Word of the Day the time before that (also a Saturday!), in 2009. When will it stick!?!?]. When Shortz took over in the mid-'90s he largely quashed a lot of crosswordesey things you rarely see any more, and ASCI is one of those things. 

[xwordinfo]

Another one of those things? OVIS:

[xwordinfo]

Both ASCI and OVIS have appeared only a small handful of times in the Shortz era. But before that ... like buffalo they roamed. OVIS I knew, but that doesn't mean I liked it any better than ASCI. Anyway, once I got (the hell) out of that NW corner, the puzzle got a lot easier. Normal Wednesday overall. See you tomorrow. Have a Love Power-ful day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.  

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]