Soft Rock And Shallow Soul

Both rock and soul represented a challenge to established popular music circa 1960 – songs inspired by the musical show-tune tradition and characterized by a sanitary superficiality that offended nobody. In contrast the newer genres were gritty, even bawdy, and the music establishment did what it could to divert attention away from this morally challenging music with the use of a new breed of teen idols (consider Franky Avalon) who performed the old sanitized music but with just a hint of blues-derived sass. In response to this, bone-fide rock and soul artists began playing much sweeter songs that were nonetheless blues-derived. Usually this involved a small change in the way musicians played but sometimes it involved pretensions like the addition of string quartets to recordings.

The Beach Boys and The Beatles were purveyors of soft rock. Meanwhile Motown record company artists like The Supremes and The Temptations did the same thing for what we shall call shallow soul. Between them soft rock and shallow soul converted many millions of tentative fans to blues-derived popular music via these more polished forms. Many artists have continued these traditions such as Bryan Adams, The Bangles and Crowded House for soft rock and Hall And Oats, The Pointer Sisters and Seal for shallow soul.