We asked Mark Siano, star of the cabaret show The Soft Rock Kid–tonight is its last night at the ACT’s Falls Theater–to give us his top eight soft rock songs of all time. Then we added video and KAPOW, we just gave you an hour of heart-rending time-killing on a Saturday afternoon.
“Making Love Out of Nothing At All” by Air Supply
How can you not love a song like this? On my tombstone I want these lyrics engraved: “I can make every tackle at the sound of the whistle, I can make all the stadiums rock!”
“Easy Like Sunday Morning” by Lionel Richie
The best song ever. Nothing like leaving your lady, and saying goodbye with a song about how you just need to let a guy be as laid back as he wants to be.
“She’s Gone” by Hall & Oates
This song at the end takes an old Soft Rock cliche, then multiplies it by 5. A lot of Soft Rock anthems have a key change at the end to punch it up. “She’s Gone” has 6 key changes at the end, before the wailing begins.
“Total Eclipse of The Heart” by Bonnie Tyler
Turn around, Bright Eyes, Turn around!
“We Belong” by Pat Benatar
You can say we belong to the night, we belong to the father. I’m not sure if Pat is talking about the heavenly father or what, but this song is a dramatic soft anthem at its best.
“Africa” by Toto
The stupidest lyrics EVER, with the prettiest melody. Perfection!
“No One is to Blame” by Howard Jones
This song is just beautiful.
“Against All Odds” by Phil Collins
This is why Soft Rock will never die. Say what you want about Phil Collins, but you may never hear a singer put his raw emotions like this ever again. Pure heartbreak, pure anger, and pure longing…. You know it’s over, but you feel if you let all out and show up at her door crying drenched from the rain, she might just take you back. She won’t take you back, because you’re pathetic, but it’s a chance you’ve got to take!
Still struggling to understand the arbitrary genre of ‘soft rock’. Is it just a ballad by a rock band? Or does it need to be done by a band that does nothing else?
The recent, heavy Olympic rotation ad for ATT (I think) that uses Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ is a good case in point. When Transformer came out, I was in thrall, but this tune (while lovely) always seemed out of whack with the rest of the disk. Of course, ATT has cut the line ‘I wish I was someone else – someone good’, rendering it awfully mushy.
The movie Trainspotting used the song for the decent into heroin bliss. Now it’s a corporate anthem (think Iggy’s Lust for Life). But unlike Lust, Perfect Day does seem to be, well, soft rock.
Is that bad? Or is this just something the hipster ironists have foisted upon us?
This is a great question, bilco. I would lean toward the “band that does nothing else” side of the spectrum, or (subset) a band that is known for nothing else (allowing for one-hit soft rock wonders). But that said, there are clearly instances where once a soft rock station claims a song, it’s done for.