10 Best Soft Rock Albums Of All Time

Rock and roll always seems to pride itself on the more aggressive side of things. While there have always been ballads in every genre, people going into a record labelled rock and roll are going to expect something a bit more raw than your average pop music that blasts out of the radio every day. Then again, there's nothing wrong with turning things down a notch every now and again.

Whether it's because of a shift in style or just the group's traditional vibe, these records are a lot more low key than your traditional rock bands. Coming from a completely different mindset, these are songs that fit comfortable in the rock category while also having a bit more rootsy feel to them, be it with acoustic instruments or using classical accompaniment every now and again.

Whenever this happens though, there's always the question of whether something like this even counts in the rock category. Yes, they may have the same shared traits as other rock bands, but would something this soft even count as rock at the end of the day? To put it bluntly, none of that matters. Rock has never been a genre for snobs, and these definitely fit the bill. It has the attitude of rock and roll, it just has some fuzzy slippers on this time around.

In the years since the days of Graceland, Paul Simon has become the unofficial dad of rock and roll. If you have a dad that loves the good old days of singer songwriting, chances are that he has more than a couple of Paul Simon songs to point to when he wants to show all the kids what real music is like. Just because you make dad music doesn't mean that you have to be tied to that sound forever.

As the years go by, the world music turned out to be just the jumping off point for Simon, with Surprise showing him getting even more experimental in his older age. Compared to the South African beats that you heard on some of his more celebrated work, Simon brings on Brian Eno to add some different textures to his sound, making for a unique blend of soft rock and almost electronic ambience in the mix.

For the most part, Eno basically becomes a full member of Paul's creative team, with most of these tracks sounding like an absolute shell of themselves outside of the amazing production skills from one song to the next. It also helps to have some of the best session players in the game behind you as well, with Steve Gadd's incredible timing behind the drums going down incredibly smooth on every track. Since Simon had already honed his chops as far back as the '60s, this feels like a callback to the style he did on Graceland. The songs are phenomenal, now it's time to reverse engineer the process to turn them into something extraordinary.