How Soft Rock Saved My Life
Maybe songs about making dreams come true were what a fool believed, but the fools were having a ball
I used to be like you, Cuepoint readers. I knew the names of all the up-and-coming indie bands. I could tell you which group had just been signed to Merge Records or Jagjaguwar, who had recorded a Daytrotter set. All my rocker friends despised mainstream music and listened to bands that didn’t even exist yet.
And now? Now I have no clue what’s going on in indie music. I’m too busy marveling over deep cuts from early Hall & Oates albums, compiling 80s Miami freestyle jams, or cataloging all of Pat Benatar’s greatest hits. I can see my former crew of hipster musicians open-mouthed with disbelief and horror, and it just makes me laugh and turn up the Whitney Houston louder.
What happened?
This is my story.
Maybe your parents were hip 70s cats, and you grew up on Dave Brubeck, Bob Dylan, and Bobby Womack. My folks, on the other hand, dug Barbra Streisand, Judy Collins, and Peter Allen (Australia’s answer to Neil Diamond). They listened to AM Gold and mainstream Top 40 pop, so that formed the soundtrack of my childhood: Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, Pat Benatar, Fleetwood Mac, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Prince, the Pointer Sisters, Kool & the Gang. I loved it all. From the backseat of my family’s wood-paneled Buick station wagon, I sang along with every word.
But by the time I turned twelve, a musician or band that was popular sucked by definition. Like any true 80s teen, I came to scorn all music that was played on the radio. The tapes stacked in meticulous alphabetical order next to my bright-red double-cassette boombox were a catalog of mournful, tragic tunage, only known to us teens (or so we thought): The Cure, The Smiths, Joy Division, New Order, REM, Yaz, The Church, Depeche Mode. I made a mixtape that consisted of just a single Cure song, “Charlotte Sometimes,” repeated over and over so I could drown myself in its melancholy for hours on end without having to rewind.
I can remember being so depressed in high school that nice weather made me feel even worse—the disjunct between sunny blue skies and the darkness in my head just underscored my internal misery. I was like a lab rat endlessly hitting the button for more cocaine, except my jones was for sorrowful British post-punk.
My body inhabited a shiny clean suburb, but my spirit belonged to the rainy, coal-smudged darkness of Manchester. Sad music—the right sad music—matched the bad weather of my psyche, and made me feel less freakish and alone.
After college, my depression came back with a vengeance, but now I had the angry alt-rock of the Pacific Northwest and beyond to feed my woe. Unemployed, forced to retreat back to my shiny suburb, I drove aimlessly for hours and smoked endless cigarettes listening to Alice in Chains, Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Jane’s Addiction, the Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, Catherine Wheel, Failure, Hum (oh my God, Hum was so good).
The misery, rampant drug addiction, and frequent early deaths of my new musical heroes was not lost on me, but dark, rageful music made me feel like I wasn’t giving in, like I was participating in some kind of subversion, even if it was a pathetically minor one.
By the 2000s, I had started my own band, which was all about tragic rock (our Myspace tagline: “Sad songs: they say so much.”) The opening song of my first record was about contemplating suicide. My sister asked wryly, “Don’t you ever write songs about anything that isn’t sad?” I did not. I didn’t know how.
Now I was trying to emulate my latest round of sad-rock idols: Nico, Interpol, Elliott Smith, Bloc Party, Iron & Wine, Bowery Electric, Radiohead. I played music to process my own personal Pit of Despair; I was like an emotional polio victim, and gloomy indie rock was the iron lung that helped me breathe.
Somehow despite all this endless weltschmerz I had friends, and in the summer of 2008, some new dancer pals invited me to a party on a boat docked in Lake Michigan’s DuSable Harbor. I’d even never heard of yacht rock but I said I’d go. I arrived solo, and walked into a scene that made my jaw drop. The room was packed with hundreds of people cheering and going berserk on the dance floor to Phil Collins’ “Easy Lover.”
I stood and watched the overjoyed crowd in amazement. My dancer friends were the wildest participants of all, spinning like tops, creating hilarious theatrics, running and sliding on their knees. Somehow I found myself dancing madly to “Ride Like The Wind” and belting out the lyrics to Kenny Loggins’ “Heart to Heart.” I danced so hard that night I had to walk home barefoot, carrying my shoes, but even bloody feet couldn’t keep the grin from my face.
I didn’t know it then, but I was forever changed.
Unlike my musician friends, my dancer friends didn’t give a shit about being cool, what Pitchfork had to say about Billy Ocean, or if anyone would judge them for listening to the Footloose soundtrack. The silly soft rock they adored was nostalgic and corny and fun to dance to. It made them laugh. They delighted in its cheesiness, and in fact, its overdramatic lyrical platitudes and over-the-top sax solos made it perfect for performative dance numbers. It made them feel good, and that was all that mattered.
This was a whole new way to live.
I began collecting tons of cheesy 80s pop, soundtrack gems, and TV theme songs. Much of it just made me smile because of its silliness and melodrama (I’m looking at you, Journey and Jefferson Starship). But corny as these tunes were, they lifted my spirits. Turns out it’s hard to take anything seriously when you’re listening to Air Supply, including yourself.
This genre made me laugh, but my admiration for the brilliance of some of the songwriters and their musicianship (Hall & Oates, Michael McDonald, Chicago, the Carpenters) was genuine. These tunes took me back to simpler times, riding in the backseat of the Buick station wagon, screaming with joy when “Maneater” would come on the radio, singing along with Juice Newton and Heart. It was definitely escapism, but it was also a huge relief from the bad weather in my brain.
I began listening to cheesy dance music from numerous decades—Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Rick Astley, Katy Perry. Something about those candy-coated pop gems seemed to shrink my problems down to manageable size. Their triviality and lightness halted the Wagnerian weight of my downward spirals. The corniness of their pleas to live heart-to-heart, be a firework, or dance on the ceiling made me laugh, but their quixotic simplicity also made me feel better. People who sang silly love songs and tunes about making dreams coming true might be naive, but if these were things a fool believed, the fools seemed to be having a ball.
I came to realize that sometimes I just need music to help me go on an escapade. Sometimes you have to run with the night, play in the shadows, be a sentimental fool. The songs from my darker days will always have a place in my heart, but for now, I’m done reeling around the fountain. I adore every band I listened to in my teens, twenties, and early thirties, and I’m so grateful for how their music helped me in my hard times. But in this moment? If loving soft rock is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
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Jennifer Boeder is a writer, editor and DJ living in Chicago.
She now plays in a very upbeat tropicalia band.
Follow Jennifer Boeder on Twitter @JennyRuthTruth
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