Pop Conference 2018

Ann Powers, Emily Gale, Rashod Ollison, Karen Tongson, and Jason King
 
Soft and Stormy: Gender, Race & Genre from the 70s-90s
This roundtable explores the confluences and divergences between two genres that ruled the radio starting in the 1970s: soft rock and quiet storm. Both are aspirational and adult, distinguished in many respects by their renewed fantasies of financial security and upward mobility. Each genre provided distinct soundtracks for mature explorations of sensuality, love and other sensations both sexy and serene. Whereas soft rock is associated with white suburbanites who gently moved on from its avuncular precursor, easy listening, quiet storm emerged in the 1970s a sophisticated new genre for a rising black, urban bourgeoisie. Individually, we briefly track some key examples from the 1970s onward, before launching into an extended conversation with one another—and the audience—about all things soft and stormy.
Ann Powers will kick us off with Kris Kristoferson’s crossover moment in the 1970s, in order to mark the intersection of country and soft rock, Nashville and Hollywood. Emily Gale follows with another look at the blue-eyed soul of Hall and Oates, and how their performance of emotional vulnerability provides an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between soft rock, masculinity, and race in the 70s.  Rashod Ollison then limns the boundaries between soft rock and quiet storm during their mutual peak in the 70s and early 80s, offering some context for their appeal to the lifestyle aspirations of boomer sophisticates. Karen Tongson exhumes Karen Carpenter’s eponymously titled solo album (recorded in 1979, but not released until 1996 after she died), to explore its curious flirtations with quiet storm—one of her rare efforts to break free from the Carpenters’ finely calibrated whiteness. Finally, Jason King brings us into the 80s and 90s, to show how Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds’ affection for acoustic guitar driven soft rock, distinguished his own approach to 80s and 90s smooth R&B.