Soft Rock

Soft rock on vinyl: melody over volume

In short: Soft rock is rock with a gentle touch: catchy melodies, warm voices, acoustic guitars and piano instead of loud amplifiers. Its heyday was seventies and eighties radio – and musicians still write in that spirit today. The Vinyl Room currently has 61 soft rock records.

What is soft rock?

Voices that stay with you: Roy Orbison with “Crying”, Jeff Buckley with “Grace”, Natalie Imbruglia with “Left Of The Middle” and Vanessa Paradis with “Variations Sur Le Même T'Aime”.

From Hawaii to Denmark: Jack Johnson with “In Between Dreams” and “Sleep Through The Static”, Australia’s Tame Impala with “The Slow Rush” and the Danish band Swan Lee with “The Garden”.

What to look for

Our soft rock records range from the sixties to the 2020s, with the seventies as the largest group; many are US editions; label, catalogue number and year of release help you tell which edition you have – it’s noted with each copy.

From our stock

First pressings

New in

→ AOR · Pop rock · Folk rock · Rock on vinyl · How to spot a first pressing · Grading explained

FAQ

What is soft rock? Melodic, gentle rock with warm voices, acoustic guitar and piano.

When was soft rock’s heyday? The seventies and eighties, above all on the radio.

Is soft rock the same as AOR? Related – AOR (adult-oriented rock) usually sounds bigger and rockier, soft rock calmer.

Which soft rock records do you have? Here, for example, Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” and Jack Johnson’s “In Between Dreams”.