The two most under-appreciated eras in music: early '70s soft rock (Todd Rundgren, Bread, Ambrosia, Carole King, Seals & Crofts, the Carpenters and America) and late-'90s "lite" alternative (Duncan Sheik, Eagle-Eye Cherry, Sheryl Crow, the Wallflowers, Toad, Sixpence and even Sugar Ray) -- soulful, introspective and tasteful. Two random cuts I've been listening to from those eras:
People like to **** on soft rock, but I actually find the songwriting to be more interesting and sophisticated than most of the other stuff that was popular at the time.
Really, I'm just a man who's tired of hearing the same 30 song playlist in a different order on each radio station everyday -- I'm looking at you, Bohemian Rhapsody, Turn the Page and Hotel California.
It's utter insanity; had no idea how bad it was until I got a job and became subjected to it everyday.
- Bohemian Rhapsody
- Turn the Page
- Hotel California
- Summer of '69
- Black Betty
- In the Air Tonight
- Piano Man
- Free Fallin'
- I Love Rock 'N Roll
- Heartbreaker (Benatar, not Zeppelin)
- Candle in the Wind
- Sweet Home Alabama
- More Than a Feeling
A short list of the songs that need to die and slow and painful death. The radio stations in my area are so weird: for instance, for some reason they've been fixated on only "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones, while ignoring the rest of their songs. No soul, and no human element to this corporate radio garbage.
There's some science to it: the soft rock I speak of has been moved to the midnight-4 AM slot on my oldies stations (probably cause the songwriting appeals more to night owls or something like that -- pretty much any song with a 7th chord has been relegated to the middle of the night
), with Def Leppard, Prince and other stuff from the '80s replacing it during the daytime; the Monkees and anything from the '60s is dead now. It's pretty bizarre to have the Monkees traded for Def Leppard in a year, but we're looking at 2020 and change is inevitable.
Edit: Also, any and all Motown (Marvin Gaye, Stevie, Spinners, Four Tops, etc.) has been abandoned... what's up with that? Some of the greatest music of all-time.