I don't give a rat's ass about categories or origins. If the song sounds good to my ears, I like it. 

I will agree that over saturation is a problem. There are many songs I used to like/love that frankly I never need to hear again. 

yeah but over saturation is not exclusive to AOR.

I have a bit of a problem with AOR as a concept

It seems that the Album Oriented Rock actually meant in the early 70's about Prog bands and assimilated, and the North American FM radios often played big chunks of albums, sometimes a fill side. This wasn't financially viable for private radio stations, which didn't have many commercial spots to air between 9 or 15 minute tracks. 

However, the AOR concept changed in the mid-70's, when Adult Oriented Radios (FM stations, going to compete with AM stations) chose singles and commercial tracks lasting between 3 and five minutes from rock albums (and their singles) and thus being able to insert much more add slots

Thus, you'll understand that I generally like Album OR, but dislike Adult O Radio

Hi,

We can use the big local station in my town (then!!!), as an example, when in the early days, they did not exactly have a list of any kind and the playing of things was pretty random (sometimes) but you were going to get all the wives' favorite kitchen songs in the afternoon, all the dancing and hip stuff at the club for fun in the evenings, and the tasteless rock guy at midnight ... and in the middle of all that, you had a show that still lives today ... SPACE PIRATE RADIO ... 

And, yeah, only on Guy's show didn't long cuts and full albums not get the listen they deserved. Klaus Schulze was played, Tangerine Dream was played ... and the funny thing? No one complained although Guy often jokes about the stoned fan, calling from his house ... "play Led Zeppelin man... !"

What started as "private" was eventually sold for the big return ... and the same thing will happen to a lot of the dope dispensaries and stores in the next five years, until the whole thing is corporate, and you end up with a cartel ... wow ... the thought ... 

What hurt things the most, I think was that these stations were "local" which the FCC did away with when things became "corporate", and the most (at the time) they could get from a restaurant, or any store and such was $100/$200 dollars a week, and one day, just before the big companies showed up ... the Army and Navy brought in their commercials and offered the station $2500 a month ... and the day after Coke and Pepsi show up to add another $1500 each ... and over night you become a corporate station and you stop fighting ... you just got a raise, and now go play the 20 songs on the albums listed ... and read your bits and such ... and shut up ... and most did ... the music was not important to any of them anyway ... so there was no pain in the change, was there! Except that the station raised its price and the number of "locals" dropped ... today, there are no "locals" in almost all stations! It's a thing of the past ... but then, no finances either, without the bigger money!

AOR became Album Oriented Rot. The smell of used up, money!

AND honestly? The music sounded like it, too! And calling it "progressive" then is just a joke!

 

As an aside, adult oriented rock listening also includes groups like the Carpenters and The Monkees. I didn't know that you were a fan.

 

When the AOR radio stations returned to playing exclusively singles in the mid 80s, all of the new wave hits as well as rock hits by Journey, etc., the format was rebranded as Adult Oriented Rock, as calling it Singles Oriented Rock was akin to throwing back their formatting styles to something that rang out as old time AM formatting. The conflation of Adult Oriented Rock and Album Oriented Rock has now become a mainstay of popular culture but are distinct and different from one another, save for the business practices which are identical.

Made this list on RYM recently

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/aor-ballads-that-make-me-want-to-get-my-pale-white-ass-to-the-mic-and-shake-my-karaoke-booty/" rel="nofollow - https://rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/aor-ballads-that-make-me-want-to-get-my-pale-white-ass-to-the-mic-and-shake-my-karaoke-booty/

While not even close to my favorite style of music, there are some artists and songs that i find irresistible.

One of the strongest aspects of this style of music are vocalists ability to be the focus of the music and of course the melody has to be strong. I've always considered neo-prog to be the AOR of prog whether that's a realistic comparison or not

Hi,

I think it did ... in one sense, but with different words. AM Radio (or hit radio) was centered around SINGLES, whereas almost all the early FM Radio was stuff from Albums, and not singles ... massive and major difference because many of the things on the albums would have been cut to fit the AM radio model, that had been famous for the 3 to 4 minute versions of songs, of which the most famous of them is LIGHT MY FIRE ... and my roomie even made fun of it, by playing that single BACKWARDS, and then the original ... as it was meant to be!

(It was fun making fun of the hit radio) ... and the local station had a habit of having fun with the AM format's and on April Fool's would become a raging AM station and unload the biggest pile of crap on the air that you could think of ... my roomie did a satire on a famous LA personality called "The Real Don Steele" which was renamed ... "The Real Don Robot" ... bits and pieces of which Guy still plays on his show these days, and many folks love it!

The start of that show ... let's take a trip down Whittier Blvd .... and the dope was on!

Album "radio", or almost ALL FM radio was much mellower and more civilized, and although the commercials started being cool in the early days, by 1980, they were the same as those on the hit radio.

That's a nice list, I do not know all of them, but I enjoy quite a few in there. 

I listen to this kind of music if I enjoy the vocals and the musicians show some skill (which a lot of times they do). 

^ prog is king but sometimes simple catchy tunes are just fun! That's why i love all the pop shlop like bubblegum, euro-disco, new wave, synthpop etc :)

I hate the commercial aspect of much of that music but no denying that bands like Jethro Tull and Beatles were commercialized to death as well.

Out of the bands I mentioned Foreigner was half american and Def Leppard were from the UK. The others I admit were from the US.  

Also, Genesis were not a stadium act in the 70's in the US. They were barely an arena band. ELP and Yes rarely played actual stadiums(when Yes did it was with other bands). Maybe arenas(there is a difference)and PF were just starting to by the time Animals came out but also mostly just played arenas. Genesis were doing smaller theaters and didn't even start to do arenas until right before SH left. They didn't do stadiums until the 80's.

 

You might like this:

 

 

 

 

The AOR I speak of also has been named FM rock (and even Coroporate Rock, and sometimes Yacvht Rock), but not MOR (Middle Of the Road, which more of an Easy-Listening wist)

But frontiers are blurry and arbitrary. Why has Aerosmith never been considered AOR (or BÖC with their Agents, Spectres and Mirrors trilogy, for that matter), while Boston and Kansas are cited as prime examples of it?

I don't know why so many are against this style of music. The focus is on a strong vocalist as well as a really sick melody that's often accompanied by some really great musicianship. Sure there are plenty of awful examples like Celine Dion or but can anyone honestly say that the following examples which are considered AOR in the sense of Adult Oriented Rock doesn't have some excellent musicianship? I don't think so.

Asia and Planet P are actually here on PA. Neo-prog has borrowed a lot of its slick production and vocal styles not only from 70s symphonic prog but from the AOR of the 80s as well.

Back then, A'smith and early BÖC were probably not really addressing adults, but growing-up eens.

Just a guess

Same works for other genres I like.

Hi,

My biggest issue with it ... is the blatant and over abundant repetition of the same things over and over and over and over ... and my concern is that people get acclimated to those "sounds" and when they hear something new on a "progressive" board, it won't click and they won't like it ... and I've seen this way too many times ... and one example, was kinda sad and pathetic ... playing Ozric Tentacles and the guy really liking the music, but 2 minutes into it ... where's the lyrics? ... and he tuned out ... completely, I mean!

The conditioning hurts the ability to hear new things ... and I'm not sure that this is one of the issues with some new folks here looking for something "like this" or "like that" ... so they can hear something they are "familiar" with ... that is hurting their ability to other kinds of music ... rock music alone, has showed in 50 years that its flexibility is incredible and gone many places ... but in AoR places ... there is no "flexibility" .... 

SIDEBAR: IF you sit down and write 20 songs in a row, they all probably have the same distributor for the material ... guess what? You are being "programmed" into thinking that is all the music that is good so you will buy those records! And the length of the cuts is definitely limited, which automatically cuts out many bands!

I should just have said large arenas or something like that. Of course Stadiums were mainly for sport and not bands and I guess also had (and still have) non existent acoustics.

Genesis , yes was a bad example , Led Zep and Sabbath were better more obvious examples. 

I was aware there was an English connection with Foreigner ( the name is a giveaway). I never thought of Def Leppard as AOR but rather soft metal but then its quite a fine dividing line between the two things!

This is indeed AOR.  Though you would classify Pour Some Sugar On Me from the same album as pop-metal.