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verslibre View Drop Down
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    Posted: May 14 2024 at 08:32
Originally posted by Awesoreno Awesoreno wrote:

^I didn't mean that each of those subgenres necessarily applied to each of those examples.


I know, but Europe.
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^I didn't mean that each of those subgenres necessarily applied to each of those examples.
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Originally posted by Awesoreno Awesoreno wrote:

Other bands of this category (that also have material that could be described as glam rock, hair metal, power pop, or arena rock) would be Asia, Survivor, Europe, and even sometimes 10cc, Genesis, and Queen.


Even at their worst, I wouldn't throw the hair metal tag at Europe, though the single and video for "Carrie" did them no favors.
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Originally posted by cstack3 cstack3 wrote:

From the all-knowing Wikipedia: 

Album-oriented rock (AOR, originally called album-oriented radio) is an FM radio format created in the United States in the late 1960s that focuses on the full repertoire of rock albums and is currently associated with classic rock.[1][2]

US radio stations dedicated to playing album tracks by rock artists from the hard rock and progressive rock genres initially established album-oriented radio. In the mid-1970s, AOR was characterized by a layered, mellifluous sound and sophisticated production with considerable dependence on melodic hooks. The AOR format achieved tremendous popularity in the late 1960s to the early 1980s through research and formal programming to create an album rock format with great commercial appeal.

From the early 1980s onward, the abbreviation AOR transitioned from "album-oriented radio" to "album-oriented rock", meaning radio stations specialized in classic rock recorded during the late 1960s and 1970s.[3]

The term is also commonly conflated with "adult-oriented rock", a radio format that also uses the initialism "AOR" and covers not only album-oriented rock but also album tracks and "deep cuts" from a range of other rock genres, such as soft rock and pop rock.

(...somehow, mixing the terms "adult" and "rock" seems somewhat incongruous!)

'Album-oriented rock' refers to a style of FM radio programming that emerged in the late 1960s in the United States. 'Album-oriented rock' stations focused on playing full rock albums rather than just individual hit singles, catering to a more mature audience interested in deep cuts and album tracks. This format emphasised a diverse range of music genres within the rock spectrum, including classic 'Rock', psychedelic/space-rock, hard rock, and progressive rock. 
However, the UK's regulatory landscape was more restrictive for FM radio programming during this period. Up until 1991, radio broadcasting in the United Kingdom was governed by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA). A small number of commercial radio stations with very commercial pop music and light entertainment content were licensed by the IBA in an effort to reach a wide audience. The aforementioned rock music genres were given far less airtime on these commercial stations, which prioritised popular music that would draw a wider audience. This is one more reason why the British term 'adult-oriented rock' has nothing to do with FM radio programming but with a certain style of rock music that was believed to be attractive to a part of the rock audience that was in its twenties in the mid-to-late 1960s, but in the mid-to-late 1970s, that audience was close to or already in their thirties.
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Originally posted by Awesoreno Awesoreno wrote:

^I think Greg's post sort of hit the nail on the head. This restates it from the opposite angle. Clearly, there are two different (but occasionally overlapping) definitions of AOR. Regardless, this topic references the "adult" variant, a phenomenon popularized mainly by bands from the US/Canada, though clearly not exclusive to that region, and prominent from the late 70s through most of the 80s.

I would concur that a "Big Six" of North American AOR would include Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Toto, and Boston. Other bands of this category (that also have material that could be described as glam rock, hair metal, power pop, or arena rock) would be Asia, Survivor, Europe, and even sometimes 10cc, Genesis, and Queen.

I don't see Queen and Europe especially as AOR. Not even pop Genesis. Confused
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^I think Greg's post sort of hit the nail on the head. This restates it from the opposite angle. Clearly, there are two different (but occasionally overlapping) definitions of AOR. Regardless, this topic references the "adult" variant, a phenomenon popularized mainly by bands from the US/Canada, though clearly not exclusive to that region, and prominent from the late 70s through most of the 80s.

I would concur that a "Big Six" of North American AOR would include Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Toto, and Boston. Other bands of this category (that also have material that could be described as glam rock, hair metal, power pop, or arena rock) would be Asia, Survivor, Europe, and even sometimes 10cc, Genesis, and Queen.
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From the all-knowing Wikipedia: 

Album-oriented rock (AOR, originally called album-oriented radio) is an FM radio format created in the United States in the late 1960s that focuses on the full repertoire of rock albums and is currently associated with classic rock.[1][2]

US radio stations dedicated to playing album tracks by rock artists from the hard rock and progressive rock genres initially established album-oriented radio. In the mid-1970s, AOR was characterized by a layered, mellifluous sound and sophisticated production with considerable dependence on melodic hooks. The AOR format achieved tremendous popularity in the late 1960s to the early 1980s through research and formal programming to create an album rock format with great commercial appeal.

From the early 1980s onward, the abbreviation AOR transitioned from "album-oriented radio" to "album-oriented rock", meaning radio stations specialized in classic rock recorded during the late 1960s and 1970s.[3]

The term is also commonly conflated with "adult-oriented rock", a radio format that also uses the initialism "AOR" and covers not only album-oriented rock but also album tracks and "deep cuts" from a range of other rock genres, such as soft rock and pop rock.

(...somehow, mixing the terms "adult" and "rock" seems somewhat incongruous!)



Edited by cstack3 - May 12 2024 at 20:40
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Originally posted by verslibre verslibre wrote:

Originally posted by mathman0806 mathman0806 wrote:

I was in high school in California in the early 80's and Sammy Hagar was a big AOR (album oriented radio) staple. I remember a classmate explaining that John Cougar is the "Midwest Sammy Hagar."


That "classmate" was on some stuff.


Yeah. I think he was. I was a sophomore and he was a senior in the same math class. He was a DJ at our high school radio station. Played mostly metal. An early supporter of Motley Crüe.
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Originally posted by cstack3 cstack3 wrote:

Originally posted by Awesoreno Awesoreno wrote:

Yeah, I'm getting the sense that many are thinking of "album-oriented rock." The topic is, as elucidated above, "adult-oriented rock." 

I never heard of "adult-oriented rock."  Would that be, well, Kenny G, or Yanni, or.....?  

You know, "Cougar Music." 
Never heard AOR in relation to "Adult-Oriented Rock" either. My entire life AOR was "Album-Oriented Rock."
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Originally posted by verslibre verslibre wrote:

Originally posted by mathman0806 mathman0806 wrote:

I was in high school in California in the early 80's and Sammy Hagar was a big AOR (album oriented radio) staple. I remember a classmate explaining that John Cougar is the "Midwest Sammy Hagar."


That "classmate" was on some stuff.


It ain’t called “high” school for nothing. 😏
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Originally posted by mathman0806 mathman0806 wrote:

I was in high school in California in the early 80's and Sammy Hagar was a big AOR (album oriented radio) staple. I remember a classmate explaining that John Cougar is the "Midwest Sammy Hagar."


That "classmate" was on some stuff.
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I was in high school in California in the early 80's and Sammy Hagar was a big AOR (album oriented radio) staple. I remember a classmate explaining that John Cougar is the "Midwest Sammy Hagar."
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Originally posted by cstack3 cstack3 wrote:

Originally posted by Awesoreno Awesoreno wrote:

Yeah, I'm getting the sense that many are thinking of "album-oriented rock." The topic is, as elucidated above, "adult-oriented rock." 

I never heard of "adult-oriented rock."  Would that be, well, Kenny G, or Yanni, or.....?  

You know, "Cougar Music." 
Interestingly, I don't believe anyone has mentioned John "Cougar" Mellencamp. I'd say he that he was a part of the AOR scene to an extent back in the 80's. 
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Originally posted by cstack3 cstack3 wrote:

Originally posted by Awesoreno Awesoreno wrote:

Yeah, I'm getting the sense that many are thinking of "album-oriented rock." The topic is, as elucidated above, "adult-oriented rock." 

I never heard of "adult-oriented rock."  Would that be, well, Kenny G, or Yanni, or.....?  

You know, "Cougar Music." 
In the mid-to-late 1970s in the UK and on the continent, the term 'adult-oriented rock' referred to a subgenre that actually has nothing to do with the meaning of 'album-oriented rock' as a U.S. term. The 'adult-oriented rock' subgenre was often associated with bands and solo artists that produced music aimed at an audience that was once a typical rock audience but had already matured, in the sense that they already had jobs and had already started families, so the music typically featured polished production, accessible melodies, and lyrics that, so believed, resonated with those supposed older listeners. Records that belonged to this subgenre were albums like "Red Octopus" by Jefferson Starship (1975), "How Dare You!" by 10cc (1976), "The Stranger" by Billy Joel (1977), "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac (1977), "Breakfast in America" by Supertramp (1979), and so on.
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Originally posted by Awesoreno Awesoreno wrote:

Yeah, I'm getting the sense that many are thinking of "album-oriented rock." The topic is, as elucidated above, "adult-oriented rock." 


I had AOR as the type of music described as "adult-oriented rock" but at the same time, the acronym = album-oriented rock.
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Originally posted by Awesoreno Awesoreno wrote:

Yeah, I'm getting the sense that many are thinking of "album-oriented rock." The topic is, as elucidated above, "adult-oriented rock." 

I never heard of "adult-oriented rock."  Would that be, well, Kenny G, or Yanni, or.....?  

You know, "Cougar Music." 
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Yeah, I'm getting the sense that many are thinking of "album-oriented rock." The topic is, as elucidated above, "adult-oriented rock." 
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When I speak of AOR, I refer to a genre of music rather than a format per se.

Here is how RateYourMusic, which has AOR as a genre tag, defines it, and when people say AOR in North America where I exist, we do tend to think of bands like Journey, Foreigner, Boston...: See https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/aor/

Originally posted by RYM RYM wrote:

AOR, short for Adult Oriented Rock, is a sub-genre of Rock that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s as an amalgamation of Hard Rock, Pop Rock and Progressive Rock. It is characterized by a rich, layered sound, slick production and a heavy reliance on commercial melodic hooks, which led to its huge popularity in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Adult-oriented rock is commonly conflated with but distinguished from the US "album-oriented rock" FM radio format, also called AOR, which played not only adult-oriented rock but also album tracks and "deep cuts" from a variety of other rock genres.

AOR songs are almost always electric guitar and synthesizer-driven, occasionally crossing over with other popular synth-driven genres such as Synthpop and New Wave, very often including harmonized vocals. The catchy, singalong choruses combined with relatively short song lengths and a bombastic, anthemic quality modeled after prog’s theatrical ambitions make AOR a very radio-friendly genre. The songs are typically more melodic than most straightforward hard rock, but harder edged than most pop rock, not unlike Power Pop‘s marriage of sugary harmonies and muscular, driving riffs.

Some of the earliest and most well known AOR bands include names like Asia, Boston, Foreigner, Journey, Survivor and Toto, with songs such as Boston's "More Than a Feeling" and Toto's "Africa" becoming hugely popular radio staples, the latter showcasing influences from lighter pop rock stylings more akin to Soft Rock and Yacht Rock. As many of these bands are known for their stadium-filled shows, there is a significant overlap between AOR and "arena rock", an originally pejorative term used by critics to describe bands known for their crowd-pleasing anthems and power ballads. However, arena rock is not an AOR-exclusive term as many acts pegged as arena rock such as the Post-Punk rooted U2 come from many different backgrounds of rock music beyond AOR.

Although AOR experienced a decline in popularity in part due to the breakthrough of Alternative Rock in the 1990s, the genre eventually went through an underground resurgence in the 2000s with acts such as Brother Firetribe and Place Vendome reviving AOR’s pompous, arena-sized rock for the modern day.
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Led Zeppelin is the right answer. While most artists were focused on singles, this was a band wholly committed to making album-oriented rock albums. I was listening to audio documentaries recently with Yes and Genesis, and it was clear that they thought Led Zeppelin were prog, and grouped them together along with others like Jethro Tull and Pink Floyd.

I was surprised to learn that Fairport Convention was a big influence on early Genesis. But it totally makes sense. And it's clear that Fairport Convention also exerted an influence on Led Zeppelin - they also sought to mine folkier elements to their music, and of course even FC's Sandy Denny guested on The Battle of Evermore.

Back in the day, you couldn't listen to AOR radio in the US without hearing a massive playing of LD on a daily basis.
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