This pop culture history serves up the soda fountain sound of the musical form that pervaded popular culture from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s: vanilla pop. The argument that vanilla, rather than being the absence of flavor, is a unique, identifiable, and underappreciated characteristic of pop music is presented. Paying tribute to vanilla pop’s mild-mannered, soft, soothing, sweet-tempered vision, the key components of this sound that freshens the ear with its extreme studio processing, high-register vocals, and sparkly acoustics are highlighted alongside its primary artists, including Frankie Avalon, Pat Boone, the Four Preps, the Carpenters, Doris Day, ABBA, and even the early-1990s balladeer Tommy Page. Beloved songs from this era such as "A Shoulder to Cry On," "A Summer Song," "For All We Know," "Johnny Angel," "Sealed with a Kiss," and "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)" are also profiled. This definitive history pays tribute to a pop music in danger of being forgotten and is a gallant attempt to challenge fashionable misconceptions and refocus the world's pop sensibility to the sounds, as well as the artists, traversing the vanilla extreme.

Joseph Lanza is the author of Elevator Music, Gravity, and Russ Columbo and was a contributor to The Cartoon Music Book. He is the executive producer for the two-disc music collection Music for TV Dinners. As an independent consultant and contributor to Time Life Music, he helped to assemble a series of pop instrumental collections. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.