Documentary tunes into arc of soft rock’s popularity
Soft rock is a subgenre that by its very name is easy to make fun of. It’s goopy. It’s sappy. It’s full of pianos and emotional longing.
Now it’s getting the documentary treatment on Paramount+. The threepart series is named after the 1977 Dan Hill ballad “Sometimes When We Touch” and includes the subtitle “The reign, the ruin and the resurrection of soft rock.”
The fast-paced, wellcrafted documentary covers the genre’s big names such as the Carpenters, Christopher Cross,
Air Supply and Michael Mcdonald, but it also gives some lesser known acts room to breath such as Pablo Cruise, Ambrosia, Rupert Holmes and, of course, Dan Hill. It chronicles the rise of soft rock in the 1970s through the early 1980s, the mockery and collapse of the genre during the MTV era and the comeback of the sound in recent years.
“Michael Mcdonald was winning Grammys and selling out arenas, then five years later, he couldn’t get booked in coffee shops,” said Van Toffler, CEO of the project’s production company Gunpowder & Sky, which is a partner with MTV Entertainment Studios on the series. “Now the Doobie Brothers are back to selling out arenas again. You couldn’t have created a better movie arc than this.”
The series provides historical context to the soft rock revolution, noting that after the tumultuous 1960s, “America was in need of relief, and soft rock was there like a sonic colonic,” says the documentary’s narrator Pete Sepenuk.
The first episode breaks
down how the keyboard dominates the soft rock sound versus the guitar for harder rock. The sound is even described as “the Doobie bounce,” which has an R&B inflection, exemplified by the group’s 1979 song “What a Fool Believes.”
The series also features musicians in other genres expressing their love for soft rock, including Stewart Copeland of the Police, Daryl “DMC” Mcdaniels of Run DMC, Nancy Wilson of Heart, Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles, and Sheryl Crow.
The second episode focuses on how uncool soft rock became when MTV arrived. “It became survival of the photogenic,” says the decidedly unphotogenic Holmes of “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” fame.
The third episode is about how the genre is now beloved in many circles, how popular yacht rock has become and how artists such as Dua Lipa, Harry Styles and the Weeknd funnel soft rock in their music today.
The comeback in the 1990s and 2000s also came in part due to rap acts. Toffler said so many hip-hop acts such as Drake and Warren G grew up with parents playing soft
rock songs, so sampling those tunes was natural.
“This music wasn’t maligned,” Toffler said. “They were just great melodic songs by the best musicians of that time. Daryl DMC loves Sarah Mclachlan.”
The documentary wasn’t able to get every big soft rock act available to talk to them. They missed relatively pressshy Mcdonald and prickly Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates. But they did get Kenny Loggins, Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire, and Robert “Kool” Bell of Kool & the Gang.
“My biggest regret is we didn’t get Richard Carpenter,” Toffler said. “He had just written a book. He was done talking about it. The Carpenters were such a rich part of that genre. That to me was a missed opportunity.”
Toffler credits director Lauren Lazin for getting the series to flow so well. The bottom line, he said, is the best of soft rock music still holds up decades later.
“I’m just amazed how good these songs are and how good the playing is,” Toffler said. “It has a lasting impact. I hope people not just enjoy the music they hear in this documentary but all the good stories around the music.”