Soft rock often transcends its designated genre. Like the best popular music, soft rock encompasses a range of styles within its parameters, including pop, jazz, soul and more.

When WMEZ-FM 94.1, a Pensacola radio station playing soft rock since 1972, changed format to "rhythmic contemporary hits radio," 94.5 stepped in.

Soft rock is a creature of the 1970s, often derided as insipid, saccharine, and soul-killing. Yet, many of us secretly sing along to songs like “Tiny Dancer,” “All Out of Love,” and “Baby Come Back.” ...

With its subtitle, “The Reign, Ruin and Resurrection of Soft Rock” — and a blurb contending that modern affection has the subgenre “experiencing one of the most unlikely comebacks in music ...