![]() ![]() Mainly, however, Soft Rock was made up of pop songs played at easy tempos and lavished in the latest studio techniques for a pristine sound - Adult Contemporary music done up in faded denim. The Laurel Canyon scene gave the sound a patina of singer-songwriter sincerity and an idealized sense of the laidback ‘70s California lifestyle. Soft Rock - soft is right there in the name, and there wasn’t a whole lot of rock. The group also spun tough funk-rock out of even more unlikely source material: “Summer Breeze” was a wispy hit the year before by Seals and Crofts, a duo who exemplified one of the era’s dominant radio sounds, California Soft Rock. Then came their mid-’60s Motown classic, “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You),” and their funky late-’60s hit for their own label, “It’s Your Thing” - and so on, for the next four decades without resolving into a nostalgia act.Ģ a remake of the group’s 1964 R&B number “Who’s That Lady?,” made the song a top-10 hit. The Isleys’ first hit came in 1959 with their first composition, “Shout,” an ebullient sweet spot between street-corner doo-wop and gospel fervor that can still fill a wedding reception dancefloor. But what of those with a genius for the during, whose talent is to unfailingly hear something of their own in the present moment? That’s the Isley Brothers. It makes sense – music itself is hard to describe, so we default to its impact on the culture. Now pick any one of your favorites - Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, whoever - and notice how their greatness is mostly celebrated as a break between times before and after. Take the structure and scale Beethoven brought to composition, or what Charlie Parker did for chord tones, forever influencing jazz improvisation. ![]() Musical genius is most often represented by those who could hear something previously undiscovered. ![]()
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