Sort me out: AOR/MOR/adult contemporary

Apparently it's still there. Appears to be the old country format (with a couple of adopted AAA people) before the Shania's moved in.

People who bought O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack to radio format!

I just remembered that the satellite station at my work back in 2000 used to regularly cycle through tracks from the Bounce original soundtrack. And then I skipped through that soundtrack before typing this. Man, if ever there was a single compilation optimized for slipping into your favorite cardigan on a fall morning and picking through organic pears at the farmer's market before the dinner party you're throwing for your friends from college which, after too much wine, devolves into binging the second season of Dawson's Creek and a whole lot of crying, this is the one. This is it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTWHNyhikcI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHOADwyydXE&list=PLkLimRXN6NKz6GkG-9Jdz0wYkYpKozXWF

Always found it weird that Bounce had a double-disc DVD edition. I see now that there was an alternate cut, but that couldn't have been why?

A new project: ranking A/C number-ones. Let's begin with 1970, the year of Nixon at the Lincoln Memorial, the Carpenters, Perry Como, and B.J. Thomas.

Sorry to derail the thread to respond to a post from 15 years ago, but to my shame, I have actually watched the Bounce deleted scenes and found them oddly fascinating. If I'm remembering right, test audiences found Ben Affleck's character unlikable, so they fixed this by cutting out all the scenes in which he showed self-awareness - the assumption being that if he didn't know he was an asshole, neither would we. It was an interesting window into how movies become more terrible than they need to be.

Wait, no, just five months ago.

You’ve Only Just Begun

I googled the list of billboard adult contemporary #1 songs and listened to the 2018 and 2019 lists. 😣🤮😯🤮🤮🤮

The modern style of music is the new normal. Music evolved to this and I'm afraid we've reached its final form - carefully calculated to appeal to the masses. 💩💩💩

This is a very good and worthy survey, Alfred.

Also lol @ Lily Dale's post. Yes, it's often difficult to determine whether a post is fifteen years old or if I've just randomly evoked a topic no one but me has had an interest in discussing within the past fifteen years.

i support this project

one of those things that cycles round my mind sometimes: i was re-reading a popular thread and the spectre of pop-rave AOR covers comes up and it got me wondering how did the term 'AOR' become known in the UK? err at least among music writers/music nerd circles. like here.

it reminds me that tom uses it throughout this piece from 1999 without ever mentioning what those three letters stand for - you either know already or, effectively, here anyway, it stands for nothing. in truth it's adult-oriented rock right? or album-oriented. either way, an (exclusively?) American radio thing. how did the term become such an easy shorthand for decades yet over here. was it used at all in the british music press or in the UK media?

several pointless repetitive questions, all asked incoherently, sorry everyone. i just don't get how we got to the point where we here hear 'walking in memphis' and reach immediately for "AOR" which feels like it should be a fairly obscure term but isn't. put me out of my misery.

Back in the 80s Kerrang! had a few writers who would push the AOR stuff, as in Pat Benatar / Journey / Foreigner / Asia etc - the hard rock end of soft rock I guess. Outside of this niche the public at large didn't use the term as far as I'm aware? Especially because the country only had about 3 radio stations at the time, so compartmentalised radio genres weren't necessary. Also we didn't have album-oriented radio as I recall it, daytime Radio 1 was all singles.

I'd guess the popularity of the term amongst music nerds in the UK is partially precisely because it's a total US import and the music also tends towards sounding very American and alien to British ears?

i always read it as adult-oriented rock