Extreme Listening Mode!

Good bless Sean Rowley. His ‘Guilty Pleasures’ night legitimised loving the cheesey rock secrets of our parents’ generation. The rules to qualify are simple; it has to be ludicrous. Be it the subject matter, the production, the scale of ambition or the size of the artists pecs, you’ve got to be aiming for ‘one louder’ pre-Tap rock nirvana (small ‘n’.) The following deserve their place in the Pantheon of Wonder that is Soft Rock Valhalla. Every one of these tunes is better than the Hoosiers.

Asia – Heat of the Moment

A massive, echoing back and forth intro leads into a keyboard-addled meisterwork chorus of crashing sounds and harmony vocals. It’s just fucking awesome, dude. Then you realise that it’s about teenagers fumbling about and going all the way. Just magnificent. Should be played over loudspeakers at those conventions of American Christian Teens. See if their ‘True Love Waits’ bullshit holds up then!

J. Geils Band – Centrefold

Riffs, in all their shapes and sizes, are the raison d’etre of the soft rock classic. But when you re-cycle your riff with a lusty ‘na-na-na-na-na-na’ chorus AND a whistling outro, you are cast-iron geniuses and you should forever be played in bars on Saturdays. Throw in a fairly sexist lyric and you can almost smell the bell-bottoms and the sleeveless tops.

Starship – We Built this City On Rock n’ Roll

Now, I have a friend in the building trade, and he assures me most cities are built on solid ground, with foundations laid down to ensure that it will stand for a long time. Not neccessary for Starship (always wondered what happened to Jefferson. And Airplane for that matter.) They build the city on Rock N’ Roll! What sort of person wouldn’t want to live there? Musically, it’s the none-more-80’s keyboard sound – so 1985 that it was actually unfashionable seven minutes after this single came out – that, ironically, establishes its timeless credentials.

Rick Springfield – Jesse’s Girl

It’s that age-old problem; your mate has a new missus, and you’d quite like to poke her. But hey, that’s nothing compared to what poor old Rick is going through here; he’s actually in love with his mate’s new squeeze! You want pain? What about this; ‘You know I feel so dirty when they start talking cute, I want to tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot.’ I don’t know whether to laugh or laugh really hard. But what a tune! Big chunky guitars, splodges of state-of-the-art Casio keyboards and best of all, handclaps. Lots of them. No song in the world would fail to be improved by the gratuitous introduction of hanclaps. Even Barber’s Adagio. FACT.

The Supernaturals – Smile

This is what The Feeling want to sound like and don’t. It’s as cheesey as a cheese made by one of Bruce Forsyth’s gags, but with a slightly arched eyebrow and a knowing sense of itself. And with the brilliant lyric ‘I’ve become so cynical these days, I don’t know how it started but it won’t go away’ they brilliantly encapsulate Western society ennui. And you can shout the chorus. Top.

Boston – More Than A Feeling

I actually swithered as to whether or not to put this in this list, because it’s exactly what it set out to be. This huge, drive-in vision of idealized America is so metronomically perfect in production – a riff here, a keyboard there – it is staggering. Used as the soundtrack to a beer commercial when I was a kid, I am sure it subconciously has caused some of the damage to my liver over the years.

Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell

Not really one song, about fifteen tagged together and sung expertly by the man they call ‘the Loaf’. This has all the excess of a Wagner opera, every lyrical cliché you’d want in an anthemn and it still, 30 years on, sounds like nothing else in rock music. Just fucking great to sing along to in a car. All salute the genius that is Jim Steinmann.

Kim Carnes – Bette Davies Eyes

Now, in America 2008 you’d do well to get a song about lesbianism played on the radio, so to have done it in 1980 – well done Ms. C. The astonishing vocal, the glistening keyboard riff, it’s just irresistable. Mylo sampled the riff on ‘In My Arms’ and it became a festival highlight 25 years later.

Bonnie Tyler – Faster Than The Speed Of Night

The female Meat Loaf, perhaps easier on the eyes but not the ears, Tyler’s shriek could break a window from twenty yards. This, another Jim Steinmann classic, centres around a schizophrenic piano riff and a lot of shrieking and bellowing. More punk than Panic At The Disco. By a mile.

REO Speedwagon – Keep On Lovin’ You

More affecting than Candle in the Wind 97. Naturally.

Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’

This is the Mother and Father of soft-rock classics. It follows every convention of the genre (cascading piano, big production, a lot of overwrought sentiment and high, high pitched singing.) It’s great. Words can’t get across how silly this song is. The best thing is, every year at least one slightly deranged soul turns up on ‘American Idol’ and professes to love this song as it helped them through a very difficult time in their life (usually in tandem with Jesus) and then butchers it to within an inch of its life, leaving the song lying in a pool of it’s own blood on the floor. Which is surely what befits it.

So come on, embrace it. You know it makes sense!