Easy

Timothy Gray is professor of English at College of Staten Island, City University of New York. He is author of Gary Snyder and the Pacific Rim (Iowa, 2006), Urban Pastoral (Iowa, 2010), and It’s Just the Normal Noises (Iowa, 2017). He lives in Plainfield, New Jersey.

“In Easy: A Hard Look at Soft Rock, cultural critic and scholar Timothy Gray dives deep into the genre that ruled airwaves in the ’70s and ’80s and still haunts karaoke nights and Spotify playlists today. From smooth, soulful voices like Karen Carpenter’s and Linda Ronstadt’s to the bittersweet ballads of Billy Joel, this book unpacks the craftsmanship, cultural backlash, and surprising influence of the music that critics, and sometimes the culture, loved to hate. Easy is a witty, revealing, and meticulously researched exploration of the soft sounds that shaped generations and continue to entrance music aficionados today.”—Karen Tongson, author, Why Karen Carpenter Matters