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9781685970574

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“In Easy: A Hard Look at Soft Rock, cultural critic and scholar Timothy Gray dives deep into the genre that ruled airwaves in the ’70s and ’80s and still haunts karaoke nights and Spotify playlists today. From smooth, soulful voices like Karen Carpenter’s and Linda Ronstadt’s 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.”—Karen Tongson, author, Why Karen Carpenter Matters “This 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’s landscape, female musicians never got a fair shake. Yet Gray’s feminist impulse showcases their achievements, along with successes such as Charlie Pride’s 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 cross over between genres and communities, even as the nation struggled to escape its deeply chiseled divisions.”—Kathleen Winter, author, Transformer “In 1971, a fan of Led Zeppelin would not be caught dead listening to the Carpenters or the Osmonds. ‘Serious’ 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—its 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.”—Thomas M. Kitts, author, Keep on Believin’: The Life and Music of Richie Furay “Yacht rockers, crate diggers, retromaniacs, and radio fanatics will relish this deep dive into the soft seventies. Chronicling an oft-overlooked era’s overlapping genre worlds, Timothy Gray reconstructs the complexity of Pop’s 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’s 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.”—Keir Keightley, University of Western Ontario

""Easy is a juggernaut of research and critique, juiced with startling facts and memorable quotations (check the pithy venom from Dylan). 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.""--Kathleen Winter, author, Transformer ""Gray dives deep into the genre that ruled airwaves in the '70s and '80s and still haunts karaoke nights and Spotify playlists today. From smooth, soulful voices like Karen Carpenter's and Linda Ronstadt's to the bittersweet ballads of Billy Joel, this book unpacks the craftsmanship, cultural backlash, and surprising influence of the music that critics 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.""--Karen Tongson, author, Why Karen Carpenter Matters ""In 1971, a fan of Led Zeppelin would not be caught dead listening to the Carpenters or the Osmonds. 'Serious' 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 many Woodstock acid rockers. Gray traces the rise of soft music--its pervasive influence across genres and its chart flexibility and durability. This book 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 many of your favorite and least favorite musicians.""--Thomas M. Kitts, author, Keep on Believin' The Life and Music of Richie Furay ""Yacht rockers, crate diggers, retromaniacs and radio fanatics will relish this deep dive into the Soft Seventies. Chronicling an oft-overlooked era's overlapping genre worlds, Timothy Gray reconstructs the complexity of pop's 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's musical mainstream. Gray unearths historical continuities and unexpected generic congruencies that upend received wisdom. For example, in recounting country musicians' and soul singers' remarkable forays into the ostensively white-suburban redoubt of ""easy listening"", he finds both joy and sadness. Yet even as strange bedfellows and crossover dreams bump up against enduring differences and divisions, the sounds remain soft and the writing smooth.""--Keir Keightley, University of Western Ontario

Author Information

Timothy Gray is professor of English at College of Staten Island, City University of New York. He is author of Gary Snyder and the Pacific Rim (Iowa, 2006), Urban Pastoral (Iowa, 2010), and It’s Just the Normal Noises (Iowa, 2017). He lives in Plainfield, New Jersey.

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