Blue-Eyed Soul Soft Rock
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Blue-Eyed Soul Soft Rock blends white pop-rock vocals with R&B harmony, smooth basslines, electric piano, clean guitar, light funk drums, sax or horn color, and polished background vocals. Tempos usually fall between 75 and 115 BPM, with a relaxed pocket rather than hard funk attack. The mood is romantic, urbane, and lightly grooving, the sweet spot where soft rock puts on a soul record and starts taking better care of the bassline.
History
The style developed as 1970s rock musicians absorbed Philadelphia soul, Motown, jazz-funk, and West Coast session craft. Hall & Oates, Boz Scaggs, Michael McDonald, The Doobie Brothers, Ambrosia, Player, Kenny Loggins, Robbie Dupree, Pages, and Ned Doheny made records that kept rock's format but shifted the feel toward R&B smoothness. The sound became one of yacht rock's central ingredients and strongly influenced adult R&B crossover, sophisti-pop, smooth jazz-pop, and 1980s AC production.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Soft rock genre history
- Bread artist history
- 1970s soft-rock radio histories
- Billboard/Adult Contemporary chart histories