Cosmic America

Back we are, tackling the fourth (and easily most controversial) album in The Doors' canon. The Soft Parade, released in mid-1969, represented a pretty big departure from the band, and…well, the critics didn't dig it. Like, at all. They hated the horns and strings on some of the songs, they hated the lyrics in places, and they seemed to have a significant amount of Morrison fatigue going on, after some of Jim's on-stage and in-press shenanigans over the previous couple of years. So the critics slagged the album and that was that. Or was it? Was this album really so problematic, or just a victim of bad timing and bitchy music journalism? We dive in and go song-by-song through the entire album.