Playlist Central

This gorgeous and heart-wrenching compendium of soft rock reminds us that much of history's mellow gold is a secret depository of mental imbalance (see selections by Helen Reddy and Gilbert O'Sullivan and Lobo, for instance) and downright sleaziness (see ones by Mac Davis and Cher and Gordon Lightfoot, for starters). Or at least that was true in the singles-bar-and-suburban-wife-swap-and-pagan-teenage-drug-commune '70s; the '80s tunes below are perhaps more inscrutable -- if no more deniable.