These are songs that just make you feel good. The smooth and easy feeling this music inspires is perfect for life’s most meaningful moments. In the early ’70s, rock music mellowed out creating the distinctive, laid-back sound of soft rock. By delving so deeply into '70s soft rock, Time-Life is getting beyond the same bunch of songs that everybody anthologizes and simultaneously demonstrating the breadth of a style that quietly dominated its era, even if it attracted less attention than other popular styles of the time. Sit back and relax with the softer side of rock. That the set does not consist entirely of the biggest hits of its artists, however, may be something of a virtue for its intended audience of nostalgic, late baby-boomers who know that the Little River Band and Ambrosia had more than one hit and who remember the one big hit by Sammy Johns.
Also typical is the use of hits, though this far into the series the compilers are relying more on the secondary successes of already minor figures like Gerry Rafferty and Firefall nevertheless, every track here was a Top 40 hit, with one, Olivia Newton-John's "Have You Never Been Mellow," a chart-topper. This rewarding but bulky set highlights 171 tracks that were chart-toppers in that era by the Bee Gees, Elton John, America, 10cc, Seals Crofts, Doobie Brothers, Carly Simon, Bread and Toto. This one, the 12th in the series, is typical, containing 24 tracks on two CDs or cassettes, with perhaps only one track, Carole King's "Nightingale," that fits into the strict definition of singer/songwriter music, even though 17 of the songs were generated by the performers themselves. Time Lifes Classic Soft Rock spotlights original hits from the 70s by the artists who made them famous. But by the mid-'70s, when it was just as common for singers to be songwriters as it had been uncommon before, the term had become virtually synonymous with soft rock popular music, and that's really what is presented for the most part on the Time-Life collections. This list should not include artists whose main style of music is anything other than soft rock, even if they have released one or more songs that fall under the 'soft rock' genre. And don’t get your scrunchies in a bunch: Some hair metal definite snuck in.Time-Life's Singers and Songwriters series, its name a slight takeoff on singer/songwriter - the term given to a group of recording artists following in the wake of Bob Dylan and other performers of the '60s who introduced the previously foreign notion that singers could write their own songs - is naturally centered in the '70s, when the singer/songwriter movement really took hold. The following is a list of notable soft rock bands and artists and their most notable soft rock songs. From genre-defining works of genius to ear-worm flights of fancy, these are the best songs of the 'Æ0s. But mostly, we curated with maximum enjoyment in mind while limiting the list to one song per artist.
In gathering our list of the ’80s very best, there was a lot to consider: Lasting impact, cultural relevance, actual musicianship, catchiness, coolness and, of course, nostalgia.
Every track is a hands down winner, and it's always wonderful to hear all the timeless gems. And as the decade wore on, rap’s wave turned into a tsunami that changed the face of pop music. VA - Time Life : Rock 'N' Roll Era 21 CD Time Life music collections are always solid, well-done affairs, and this one, which features classic early era rock & roll hits from 1955 to 1964, is no exception. New Wave stalwarts like Talking Heads and Devo found new grooves while transcendent artists like Marvin Gaye and Paul Simon offered up some of the best work of their careers. Pop on most any ’80s playlist and you’re bound to hear the same cycle of kitchy, seemingly alien vintage pop: synthy goth songs, lite hip-hop, the occasional punk infusion and a whole lot of hair metal.īut the '80s sound was so much more than the sum of its eccentricities, and there's a huge difference between an ‘80s song’ and a ‘song from the 80s.’ This is the decade that gave us Prince and Madonna, MJ and NWA. ’80s nostalgia usually focuses on the decade at its most outlandish: big hair, Day-glo shirts, scrunchies, New Coke… call it the Stranger Thingseffect.