Five Faves: Soft Rock Snoozin'
Despite being awoken by the same soft rock playlist for a decade, only a handful of songs could elicit the "one more song" refrain. Here are five.
Five Faves is an ongoing listicle series presenting a collection of five of my favorites from a specific category—songs, albums, videos, books, movies, quotes—just about anything is fair game. This isn’t intended to be a definitive “best of” list but more of an in-the-moment list of things that have moved me or brought me joy.
In what seems like a previous life, the not-too-distant past of my working life, both my wife Tina and I were early risers. We'd set the "music" alarm for 5:15 and the "get up" alarm for 5:30, giving us 15 minutes of snuggling time before getting out of bed—a great way to get that oxytocin flowing to start the day. The "music" alarm I speak of was served up on weekdays by our Sonos audio system, which would randomly shuffle tracks from a playlist entitled Time Life Soft Rock Morning Megamix™. All of the songs on the 150-200 track playlist, which primarily comprised “soft rock” gems, came from one of three Time Life Music boxsets that I'd managed to digitally "acquire" in the mid-2000s:
Classic Soft Rock - 18 CDs, 254 tracks
Singers & Songwriters - 11 CDs, 150 tracks
Romancing The 70s - 11 CDs, 168 tracks
During our 15 minutes of "snuggle time" we could usually expect to get through at least 3 or 4 complete tracks before the "real" alarm sounded. Invariably Tina's "Slow Rise" phone chime would sound mid-song and we'd give ourselves the leeway of letting that song finish before peeling ourselves off the mattress. Whenever I'd feel like I wanted to lie in a little longer—yes, it was always me that wanted the lie in!—I'd play the "one more song" card, thereby giving us a few more valuable minutes of snoozing/snuggling time. But here's the rub: the "one more song" had to be a "special song", one of those 10 to 20 tracks that we could always convince ourselves were worth staying in bed for.
We'd almost certainly snooze or snuggle for an extra three to five minutes for any of the tracks below, which are presented in alphabetical order by artist name.
Dave Loggins - Please Come To Boston
This song is probably the saddest of the bunch for me. Over the course of the song our narrator is trying to convince his love that she should come join him in the most recent of the towns to which his life's journey has brought him. At each opportunity she says no, and suggests that it’s he that should come back home to her. By the end of the track I almost want to scream, "if you love him so much and are his "biggest fan" then, for the love of all that is holy, just go join him!"
The track, Loggins' most well-known and commercially successful song, appeared on his sophomore album , 1974's Apprentice (In a Musical Workshop). It spent two weeks at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1974 and was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Male Pop Vocal performance (won by Stevie Wonder for "Fulfillingness' First Finale”).
In writing about the song's backstory, Dave Loggins had this to say:
"The story is almost true, except there wasn’t anyone waiting {here} so I made her up. In effect, making the longing for someone stronger. It was a recap to my first trip to each of those cities and out of innocence. That was how I saw each one. The fact of having no one to come home to made the chorus easy to write. Some 40 years later, I still vividly remember that night, and it was as if someone else was writing the song."
Looking Glass - Brandy
"Brandy" (You're a Fine Girl)", released in 1972 by the American pop rock band Looking Glass, tells us the story of Brandy, a barmaid from "a port on a western bay". She is regularly regaled by the sailors that pass through the bar who tell her that she's a "fine girl" and would make a "good wife". But Brandy's heart belongs to another:
Brandy wears a braided chain
Made of finest silver from the north of Spain
A locket that bears the name
Of a man that Brandy loved
He came on a summer's day
Bringin' gifts from far away
But he made it clear he couldn't stay
No harbor was his home
Sadly, for Brandy, it wasn’t meant to be; though the sailor agreed that she’d make a good wife, his parting words left no doubt of his intentions: “my life, my love, and my lady is the sea”. Brandy would be forever left rebuffing the sailors that passed the time away in her harbor town while she pined for the true love that had chosen the sea.
The single reached number 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Cash Box charts; so influential was the song that the name "Brandy" increased in popularity as a girl's name in the US, moving from the 353rd most popular name in 1971 to the 82nd in 1973.
Please feel free to share the Joy with anyone else you know that loves music! Because, after all, sharing is caring, right?
Michael Johnson - Bluer Than Blue
This is by far the one track on our list of favorites that would guarantee us a few more minutes in bed, in part because it seemed to be played so infrequently. The "random" shuffle algorithm employed by Sonos definitely seemed to be subpar as certain tracks played multiple times a week, while we might go months without hearing this one.
Michael Johnson's "Bluer Than Blue" which appeared on his fourth album, 1978's The Michael Johnson Album, is one of those reverse psychology love songs like the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" or John Waite's "Missing You". In the former, Carl Wilson follows the seemingly heartless line "If you should ever leave me / Well, life would still go on, believe me" with the reality that "The world could show nothing to me / So what good would living do me?" while in the latter, despite Waite's ironic protestation in the chorus that "I ain't missing you at all", the entire song is built around the fact that he's desperately missing the object of his affections.
Michael Johnson uses a similar device; he spends the verses discussing how good life will be when his love has left his life:
After you go, I can catch up on my reading
After you go, I'll have a lot more time for sleeping
And when you're gone, looks like things are gonna be a lot easier
Life will be a breeze, you know
I really should be glad
The truth is revealed, though, when we get to the chorus:
But I'm bluer than blue, sadder than sad
You're the only light this empty room has ever had
Life without you is gonna be
Bluer than blue
The track was popular across multiple charts, peaking at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 while also spending three weeks at number one on the Easy Listening chart. An interesting tidbit: this song was the eighteenth music video ever aired on MTV, sandwiched between REO Speedwagon's "Keep on Loving You" and The Pretenders' "Message of Love".
Michael Martin Murphey - Wildfire
Michael Martin Murphey's "Wildfire", from his fourth album Blue Sky - Night Thunder, released in 1975, begins with a homesteader relaying the sad tale of a woman who died while out looking for her pony. In some distant past the titular pony, Wildfire, had "busted down his stall" and become lost in a blizzard; sadly, his owner passed away while out searching for him. Back in the present, the homesteader has heard a "hoot-owl howling outside my window / 'Bout six nights in a row" and he's sure this presages the ghost of the young woman coming for him; together they'll ride away on Wildfire and "get the hard times right on out of our minds".
The song became Murphey's highest charting single, reaching number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US and topping the charts in Canada. I love a great "story song" and this one, sad as it is, checks a lot of boxes. The woman's love of Wildfire, the resulting tragedy of her death, and the supernatural element of our narrator escaping this mortal coil on the spectral pony along with the ghost of her owner all combine to make for an enthralling listen.
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Paul Davis - I Go Crazy
In the early 80s American singer songwriter Paul Davis had a pair of commercially successful singles—1981's "Cool Night" which peaked at number 11 and 1982's "'65 Love Affair" which topped out at number 6—but it's his record-breaking late 70s track "I Go Crazy" that's long been my favorite of his. Released in 1977 and taken from the album Singer of Songs: Teller of Tales, this song would end up spending a total of 40 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, a record at the time.
The heartrending song describes the love sickness experienced by Davis when he unexpectedly encounters a previous lover. Although the passage of time had seemingly healed a broken heart—"getting over you was slow" but "I've learned how to laugh and smile"—our narrator had thought he'd never see his love again. Oh how easy that would've been! Now that she's reappeared in his life, he can only acknowledge that the sight of her still makes him "go crazy", stirring up "that old feeling inside". In the heartbreaking second verse, Davis bares his soul for the world to see:
You say he satisfies your mind
Tells you all of his dreams
I know how much that means to you
I realize that I was blind
Just when I thought I was over you
I see your face and it just ain't true
Yet another track that tugs on the heartstrings; I can't get enough of this song.
As always, I’d love to hear what you thought about these picks. When you’re finished reading, listening and watching, please hop into the comments.
Do you give yourself the gift of waking up to music?
What sort of music were you listening to in the late 70s and early 80s?
Are you a fan of Soft Rock (or Yacht Rock as it seems to be popularly known now)?
Do you have any favorite artists or songs from the genre or period?
Which of these tracks did you love the most?
Great tunes that take me back ... to what I don't know exactly, but it's a cozy place.
When I need to wake up at a specific time, I prefer to awaken to music. I have a few song snippets I use as my alarm.
I refuse to use the phrase "yacht rock" after someone on here (if memory serves) wrote an enlightening article about its origins. I grew up on soft rock and transitioned to harder rock after I discovered my parents' radio had FM capabilities, and that they didn't object to me changing the station as long as I changed it back when I was done listening.
These are all great songs and I could hear them in my head while reading along! I recently saw the video for John Waite’s Missing You (it’s on an 80s Music Video YouTube channel and I was being lazy). I hadn’t seen it in yeeeeeeaaaaaarrrrrrs. In addition to always saying “Yes, You are definitely missing her” every time he sang “I ain’t missing you”, I noticed that in the video he LITERALLY misses her. She shows up at his place and is knocking on his door, but he’s listening to the song with headphones on and doesn’t hear her.
I’m curious: if you made it a Top Ten, would Fogelburg’s “Another Auld Lang Syne” be included?