鈥溾楽oft Rock,鈥 they call it; low-key stuff with wide appeal.鈥 So stated a 1971 Chicago Tribune article on the Carpenters. Over time, Soft Rock became the butt of jokes, yet during its heyday, it fit America鈥檚 changing mood, blending rebellion with conservatism. Easy explains how Soft Rock and associated genres emerged in the late 1960s and achieved broad recognition in the 1970s. Tracking hundreds of songs, Timothy Gray supplies Billboard鈥檚 chart rankings to show how soft music easily crossed over from one fan base to another. Featuring acts as familiar as Fleetwood Mac and Carly Simon, and as underappreciated as the Three Degrees and J. D. Souther, Easy provides an entertaining aircheck of American culture during a transformational era.
鈥泪苍 Easy: A Hard Look at Soft Rock, cultural critic and scholar Timothy Gray dives deep into the genre that ruled airwaves in the 鈥70s and 鈥80s and still haunts karaoke nights and Spotify playlists today. From smooth, soulful voices like Karen Carpenter鈥檚 and Linda Ronstadt鈥檚 to the bittersweet ballads of Billy Joel, this book unpacks the craftsmanship, cultural backlash, and surprising influence of the music that critics, and sometimes the culture,loved to hate. Easy is a witty, revealing, and meticulously researched exploration of the soft sounds that shaped generations and continue to entrance music aficionados today.鈥濃擪aren Tongson, author, Why Karen Carpenter Matters
鈥淭his exuberant account of an underappreciated decade of music and popular culture tracks not only the hits and artists, but social history and the impact of sexism and racism on 1970s music scenes. Easy is a juggernaut of research and critique, juiced with startling facts and memorable quotations (check the pithy venom from Dylan). In the slew of shifting, merging genres making up easy listening鈥檚 landscape, female musicians never got a fair shake. Yet Gray鈥檚 feminist impulse showcases their achievements, along with successes such as Charlie Pride鈥檚 in diversifying the county chart. This book opens minds and ears to a trove of Pop, Country, Soul, and Rock gems that found a way to crossover between genres and communities, even as the nation struggled to escape its deeply chiseled divisions.鈥濃擪athleen Winter, author, Transformer
鈥泪苍 1971, a fan of Led Zeppelin would not be caught dead listening to the Carpenters or the Osmonds. 鈥楽erious鈥 rock music listeners ruthlessly dismissed Soft Rock or any Soft Pop. Yet, by the end of the decade, soft music had influenced the Rolling Stones, the Allman Brothers, and Woodstock acid rockers. In Easy, Timothy Gray traces the rise of soft music鈥攊ts pervasive influence across genres and its chart flexibility and durability. Easy is often surprising, as when Gray reveals Karen Carpenter and Janis Joplin or Charlie Rich and Dickey Betts to be more similar than dissimilar. A warning to the reader: Easy might cause you to reevaluate some of your edicts on your favorite and least favorite musicians.鈥濃擳homas M. Kitts, author, Keep on Believin鈥: The Life and Music of Richie Furay
鈥淵acht rockers, crate diggers, retromaniacs, and radio fanatics will relish this deep dive into the soft seventies. Chronicling an oft-overlooked era鈥檚 overlapping genre worlds, Timothy Gray reconstructs the complexity of Pop鈥檚 past while revising enduring presumptions about sonic classification and social identity. At one level a critical listening guide to a discounted taste formation, Easy recasts Soft Rock as a pale palimpsest of an entire decade鈥檚 musical mainstream. Gray unearths historical continuities and unexpected generic congruencies that upend received wisdom. Yet even as strange bedfellows and crossover dreams bump up against enduring differences and divisions, the sounds remain soft and the writing smooth.鈥濃擪eir Keightley, University of Western Ontario
