DJ Jim Q's Playlist: SOFT

Welcome listeners to October’s playlist. SOFT is the theme this month, selected by our Canadian friends from the Victoria chapter of CreativeMornings. What does soft mean to you? There are so many potential interpretations, or I should say, connotations. Soft can be tender, comforting, even fragile, but it’s also sometimes used as a pejorative term for being weak. Strange that we would equate weakness with softness. After all, soft things are flexible and resilient. It is far easier to snap a brittle stick than a pliable hose. I suppose there is a lesson in there somewhere.

When I think of soft in the context of music, I can’t help but recall the 70s and 80s era of easy listening that filled the FM radio airwaves. Soft rock, as it was called, was a pervasive presence throughout those decades. Bands like Foreigner, Fleetwood Mac, Seals and Crofts, Air Supply, Ambrosia, The Eagles, Kansas, America, and Bread all had a sweet, soothing, refined sound that hypnotized the listening masses. These polished compositions seemed to ooze out of the speakers and envelop you. Not to suggest that some of these bands couldn’t rock out, but it was their calmer, more mellow tunes that got airplay on popular radio.

At the time, these songs were a total bum-out to me, especially on long car rides with my parents as king of the disc jockeys Casey Kasem would count down the American Top 40 hits. I was able to spare myself from this auditory annoyance with my trusty Walkman loaded with an Iron Maiden cassette, the volume just loud enough to drown out the hokey hits. However, in my later years, my cynicism has softened, and I’ve come to really enjoy those old songs. They’re so familiar and nostalgic it’s hard to deny their appeal.

As one might imagine, the soft rock category has many subgenres: sunshine pop, blue-eyed soul, jazz rock, country rock, and, of course, yacht rock. (Shout out to my main man Chris(topher) Cross, not to be confused with Kris Kross.)

Soft rock has survived the decades, even if carried mostly by irony. In the early 2000s, DJ Hennessy Youngman (aka Jayson Musson) released a series of mixtapes called CVS Bangers, as in songs you might hear playing in CVS pharmacy while shopping. Mostly a joke, but also a pretty solid string of soft rock hits, these mixes juxtaposed gentle, consumer-safe tunes against over-the-top morning zoo style station IDs and raucous sound effects like air horns and guitar stabs. CVS Bangers 1–4 have since become cult hits and are well worth a listen.

For one fleeting moment, I was tempted to compose a playlist with nothing but soft rock classics, but good sense prevailed, and I instead focused on the theme rather than the sound. A relief to many, and maybe a disappointment to the yacht rockers out there. My apologies to the latter. For those interested in a DJ Jim Q soft rock playlist, I have one ready to go. It’s called Arizona Breeze. This hand selected track list was curated to accompany the serene sunsets of Tucson Arizona where my crew friends would visit the southwestern city for the All Souls Procession celebration.

So sink in for a listen and let these sounds gently carry you away. The theme this month is Soft. Fragility, tenderness, and sensitivity prevail in these 40 plus songs of softness. To inaugurate the playlist, Otis Redding kicks it off with his pleading classic “Try a Little Tenderness.” The soothing sounds continue with Lauryn Hill’s hip-hop–infused cover of “Killing Me Softly,” only to float away again with Little Dragon’s ethereal “ “Feather.” From there, we bounce to Wet Leg, then Ciara, then Cocteau Twins, before landing softly on a new track from Patrick Watson featuring November Ultra.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoy these playlists, please let me know, I’d love to hear from you. Give me a shout on Bluesky, and be sure to follow me on Spotify. See you next month with another soft launch.