The first episode of Sometimes When We Touch is pretty good. It touches on the diversity and range of soft rock, from whites, blacks, jazz, folk, R&B and everything in between. A lot of the big hits get a 30 second sound byte, though there is a truly unfortunate amount of Captain and Tenille's "Love Will Keep Us Together" which I hardly consider as important as any song from America, The Doobie Brothers, The Commodores, or even Air Supply. However, there are a couple of interesting background stories (can you believe Sometimes When We Touch was written by a 19 year old about his first relationship, from which he was dumped???) and a general overview of the 1970s radio and music television.
Here's the thing: I'm an Xennial. Soft rock was my early childhood, and it did not end with the beginning of the 1980s. In typical MTV format, the second episode condescendingly blasts soft rock as "nerdy" and calls the toxic masculinity of Boomers in the 80s the general tone of music from that decade. This was not my experience at all, and especially looking back as a middle aged adult, The Police are included in my soft rock rotation they're certainly not a "ruination" of the overall sound. A lot of early 80s New Wave overlaps heavily with soft rock, ranging from Joe Jackson to Jackson Browne to some of the mellower hits of Michael Jackson.
There was a soft rock station when I was growing up called Super 102 and there was the hard rock station that played 1980s metal and 70s guitar rock that was 105 FM. More often than not, The Police and Madonna were grouped in with Kenny Loggins or Lionel Ritchie than the opposite. I found everything about this MTV documentary juxtaposing its early days so harshly to 70s soft rock utterly laughable. Soft rock was alive and well into the mid-80s, and that includes artists making videos such as Johnny Hates Jazz and Duran Duran.
MTV gonna MTV, I guess. I don't recommend the second episode of this series to anyone who isn't the kind of Gen Xer who posts memes on Facebook that brag about the brutality of their childhoods compared to the "snowflake" Millennials. Must have been all of that England Dan and John Ford Coley at grandma's house.
Here's the thing: I'm an Xennial. Soft rock was my early childhood, and it did not end with the beginning of the 1980s. In typical MTV format, the second episode condescendingly blasts soft rock as "nerdy" and calls the toxic masculinity of Boomers in the 80s the general tone of music from that decade. This was not my experience at all, and especially looking back as a middle aged adult, The Police are included in my soft rock rotation they're certainly not a "ruination" of the overall sound. A lot of early 80s New Wave overlaps heavily with soft rock, ranging from Joe Jackson to Jackson Browne to some of the mellower hits of Michael Jackson.
There was a soft rock station when I was growing up called Super 102 and there was the hard rock station that played 1980s metal and 70s guitar rock that was 105 FM. More often than not, The Police and Madonna were grouped in with Kenny Loggins or Lionel Ritchie than the opposite. I found everything about this MTV documentary juxtaposing its early days so harshly to 70s soft rock utterly laughable. Soft rock was alive and well into the mid-80s, and that includes artists making videos such as Johnny Hates Jazz and Duran Duran.
MTV gonna MTV, I guess. I don't recommend the second episode of this series to anyone who isn't the kind of Gen Xer who posts memes on Facebook that brag about the brutality of their childhoods compared to the "snowflake" Millennials. Must have been all of that England Dan and John Ford Coley at grandma's house.