MOR Albums 1980-1982

Aren't these AOR?

Most are. I'd say just about all qualify as MOR, though it can be argued. Wiki: "Middle of the road or MOR is a broad term encompassing a number of musical styles. Not technically a genre in its own right, it was, and in some places still is, a popular radio format. Music classed as MOR is broadly popular in outlook, but not cutting edge; it is generally strongly melodic..."

I always wanted to hear Pictures at Eleven.

Signals, Let's Dance (outside your date range?), and Face Value are sturdy. Working Class Dog by the still-unappreciated Rick Springfield is an unappreciated power-pop gem. But Private Eyes still sounds the most exciting.

Yeah, mostly. True Lee Abrams fodder. Not quite enough Pat Benatar inclusion. Crimes of Passion did sell four million, so it certainly is a top choice. Precious Times, the next one, sold two million and went to number 1, I think. Get Nervous went into the top five and had two charting singles on it.

Outside of the obvious single, a tremendous one, Tommy Tutone was utter crap. I think I bought it the same day as the DB Cooper debut, since slid into total obsolescence.

Yeah, I limited it to one album per artist to keep it simple. If you prefer another album between 79-83, mention it when you vote.

Music classed as MOR is broadly popular in outlook, but not cutting edge; it is generally strongly melodic..."

MOR is soft rock, Light FM stuff. Anne Murray, Dan Fogelberg, etc. This is an AOR poll. This gets my panties up in a bunch because I grew up listening to FM radio.

With that said, my vote goes to REO Speedwagon. Easy pick.

there are a bunch of great albums on there. it's a tossup between Paul McCartney's II, Hall & Oats, Xanadu and Alan Parsons, but i went with McCartney. one of my all time fave albums

xp

Ha ha, I just bought the Tommy Tutone 2 album a few days ago, for $1 at a Salvation Army. Was never even particularly curious about it before. No opinion yet.

Favorite album up there is easily the John Cougar one, though REO, Joan Jett, J Geils, Billy Squier, Loverboy, Foreigner and Men At Work are all pretty great (not necessarily in that order.) Like the Bryan Adams and Huey Lewis, too, but liked their subsequent Reckless and Sports more. (Also prefer first and third Foreigner, first Loverboy, maybe first Squier, possibly '70s albums by REO and Geils, but never mind.) Like the Benatar okay, but much prefer her first two. (Actually, beyond the first two, I've pretty much only ever cared about owning a best-of or two.) Didn't actually own the Rick Springfield album til I got the CD a couple years ago, and it seems really good. Lots of others (Chris Cross, Abba, Seger, Yes, Genesis, Queen, Supertramp, Rush, Billy Joel, etc.) worth owning. Not sure I've ever heard that whole Eddie Money LP, but I like most of his early singles, so maybe I should. For '80s Hall and Oates, I've always been happy with Rock N Soul Pt 1.

Still stumped how Joan Jett (among other people up there) can be called "MOR," when she probably rocked harder than anything else on the radio in the '80s until Guns N Roses came along. Though I don't doubt her big hits did get some adult contemporary airplay.

So yeah, I agree w/ kornrulez -- this list looks way more album-oriented rock than middle-of-the-road to me, too. (With a couple exceptions -- Christopher Cross, for instance. Though I bet AOR played him.)

I've caught up with Night Ranger and Survivor in later days, too -- like them both a lot -- but mostly on best-of CDs. Don't know all their albums.

Doubt Abba got AOR airplay, either, come to think of it (though their later stuff may have deserved to.)

Yeah Joan Jett didn't seem to belong in that list to me either.

xp Air Supply more AC than AOR, too. And there were certainly artists (REO, Hall & Oates, Billy Joel, Foreigner when they did ballads, Don Henley and Phil Collins -- a couple more pretty good ones) who crossed both ways, AC and AOR. But no way did, say, Rush get played on AC stations. Skeptical also about solo Robert Plant, too, and Hagar, and Cheap Trick's not-bad but far from great One On One (though did that even have a hit? It never got higher than #39 in Billboard.) Among others. (I know almost nothing at all about the Alan Parsons Project.)

"If You Want My Love" gets a lot of love.

Went to # 45. "She's Tight" (which I've always liked more) went to # 65. So: both marginal hits, at best.

Also, for whatever it's worth, another thing that makes the list way more AOR than MOR is that the artists are all white people: No Lionel Richie, even.

You'll find none of these in all-time critic's polls, unless you count The Police, The Pretenders, Roxy Music, The Go Go’s, Duran Duran, ABC, Madness, Spandau Ballet, Ultravox, Haircut One Hundred, Eurythmics, Yaz, Thomas Dolby, Human League, Soft Cell, Adam Ant, Modern English, and Depeche Mode

Also, honestly not trying to give you a hard time, fastnbulbous -- I actually think this is one of the more interesting threads I've seen on ILM lately -- but I really want to see an all-time critics poll with Haircut One Hundred and Modern English on it!

Also missing: Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks, Linda Ronstadt, and Olivia Newton-John (unless you've confused AOR with MOR).

xp And for me, another odd choice on that new wave list is Ultravox, who I don't think I've ever heard on the radio in my life (except possibly on a new wave specialty show or two in the early '80s.) And Joan Jett and Don Henley and Bowie's Let's Dance definitely got more respect from U.S. critics than Ultravox or Spandau Ballet did at the time.

Olivia Newton-John

Actually, she's up there, though with ELO, which seems odd to me given that the song by her people really couldn't get away from in the early '80s was "Physical." But yeah -- Laura Branigan missing, Kim Carnes missing, lots of other big MOR hitmakers.

besides "Bette Davis Eyes," how big was Kim Carnes on MOR-AOR radio? Her Top 40 track record is shoddy (just five more hits: a couple barely scraping in, one Top 15).

Probably not much on AOR (maybe even including "Bette Davis Eyes.") Though I bet all her Top 40s hit AC -- "Don't Fall In Love With A Dreamer" and "More Love" were probably pretty big, at least. (Actually, looking at the Whitburn Top Pop Singles book right now, he says she hit the AC chart with "You're A Part Of Me" as early as 1976, and "What About Me?" with Kenny Rogers and James Ingram went #1 AC in '84. So I wouldn't be surprised if AC was her main radio format.)

Listen to Kim singing over syndrums and Gary Numan synths

Maybe it's a regional thing, and somewhere in the east coast there can be found stone tablets with very precise specifications, but where I grew up, the definition of MOR was not set in stone. Our radio station in Iowa DID play songs from ALL of the albums listed. Sure, Jett and Benatar and a couple others are more rockin' exceptions, but I'd still say the majority were MOR. But perhaps my definition of what truly rocks is different than others. The station also printed a list of the top albums and singles on rotation every week or two, and I'd pick it up for free at Musicland and such. I thought I saved them, but can't find them. Would have been fun to scan a couple for yall. Guess you'll just have to trust me, heh.

I also probably didn't need to mention so many new wave albums in my example. It was definitely a whole different thing going on in British radio, as some of those got almost no airplay or sales at all in the U.S., despite MTV dipping into some of that stuff.

Not sure if this is total sales for the year, Olivia NJ's "Magic" from the Xanadu album was the #3 song for 1980:

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/charts/yearend_chart_display.jsp?f=The+Billboard+Hot+100&g=Year-end+Singles&year=1980

The Babys' most successful records were early Eighties AOR. Union Jacks and On the Edge produced singles which charted. "Back On My Feet Again,"
"Midnight Rendezvous," etc.

John Waite issued his first solo in '82. Produced a minor hit. "Missing You" wouldn't hit #1 until a couple years later.

Aldo Nova's debut definitely hit the top of the charts, too.

Crap, I forgot Aldo Nova! A friend did "Fantasy" at a karoake party just recently too!

Fastnbulbous, just out of curiosity - did your radio station in Iowa not play r&b-leaning stuff by say Lionel Richie or c&w-leaning stuff by say Kenny Rogers? (Either way, sounds from your description like it was some weird mongrel format, though I guess if a town is small enough, and there's only one or two stations, that's not unheard of. Still, too bad if they didn't get Ray Parker Jr's "The Other Woman" on, at least. I bet they played Steve Miller's "Abracadabra," though.) (And how much of the new wave you mention did the station play? The Police and Human League couldn't have been that big a stretch, if it was already playing Joan Jett...)

...not to mention Men At Work and Paul Young (who were new wave, sort of! Or at least Paul Young seemed new wave to me at the time, in the Culture Club sense. Even if he was covering Hall & Oates.)

Btw, the great Toto album is the second one, Hydra. (And the debut is better than IV, too.)

It was in Dubuque, IA, around 80,000 people at the time. The station might have been 97.3, which is now KGRR classic rock, but was different back then. Country wasn't fashionable there at the time (though no less than six country stations have popped up since then), nor was R&B, though my mom had Curtis Mayfield, Lionel Richie and Prince records. There's actually a decent black population there now, which was lacking when I grew up there. However, KUNI 98.7 (public radio based at University of Northern Iowa) was where I first heard Sugar Hill Gang and Run DMC in 82-3.

"90125" was kind of a disappointment, and yet so much better than any other AOR album ever released. At least unless you count "Duke" by Genesis as AOR.

Ha! I forgot all about that Kim song "Invisible Hands"! I used to have the 45 of that and even remember what the sleeve looked like now.

Technically, Ship too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, by FZ. "Valley Girl," hit single inescapable on radio, with daughter Moon, 1982.

Ian Hunter You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic 1979 Spawned "Just Another Night" and "Cleveland Rocks," both having quite a bit of impact on radio and in clubs. "Just Another Night" so much, I could barely stand it for years.

it also has beardo fave "Bastard" (that i just found out had John Cale on keyboards)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

MOR albums 1980-82 = worst rock sub-genre ever (next to hair metal)

not like I'm digging out any of these to check but I remember always thinking when I'd listen to it: "sure, this Men at Work album is a little overplayed, but it's a solid goddamn record." Weren't there like 5 singles on that thing? So, that.

my fave by far:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/16/Queen_The_Game.png

other than queen, the only one up there i would still listen to today would be eye in the sky. (though i certainly liked songs from a bunch of those albums up there)

Pete Townsend - Empty Glass

the only one i own is Bowie's Let's Dance. and i like about half of it, which is more than i can say for any of the other records i've heard (and very likely the ones i haven't). so i voted for that one.

I still object to the charaterization of a Robert Plant album as MOR.

when I was reviewing reissues in the late 90s the guy from Sony Legacy told me Men At Work were by far their biggest seller (followed by Night Ranger, no shit!) so obviously lots of people treasure this era.

Business As Usual was #1 for 15 weeks.

Cheap Trick's Next Position Please is a v. good AOR album from 83. try the recent "authorized edition"

no way Hall & Oates belong on this list!

Thanks for humoring me. Maybe I was wrong to think of all those bands as MOR, but in 1980 when I was ten, I didn't really differentiate between ELO, Styx, Queen, Robert Plant, Olivia Newton John, Hall & Oates, even Air Supply. It was all on the same radio station I listened to, some of which I liked, some I hated. When I got more into post-punk, metal and indie, I also equally proclaimed it all "middle of the road pieces of shit" or something like that, and only gradually came back around to appreciate SOME of it again.

So did anyone buy one of these to revisit? I was gonna get Phil Collins but decided I don't like his album. I might get the new remastered version of Empty Glass if I find it cheap. Already own about a dozen. Briefly considered Christopher Cross, Loverboy, REO Speedwagon, Alan Parsons, Asia, but nah.

You do realize that probably every single album up above is easily available for $1 or less somewhere, right? Just making sure; you said the words "new remastered version," words which always tend to make me nervous. (Either way, I'm shocked that I seem to be the only person here who loves American Fool -- one of the best albums of the '80s, easy.)

Sad that nobody else has mentioned Freeze Frame or Don't Say No either, both awesome albums which I really assumed had an ILM following. (Hopefully they'll both get some votes regardless.)

These may sometimes appear in critics polls. Although not in the Top 100.

David Bowie - Let's Dance 83
Phil Collins - Face Value 81
Foreigner - 4 81
Supertramp - Breakfast In America 79
Survivor - Eye Of the Tiger 82
Toto - Toto IV 82

The 1983 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll
19. David Bowie: Let's Dance (EMI America) 221 (23)

Henley didn't place in Pazz & Jop til Building the Perfect Beast in 1985, looks like (though I'm pretty sure I Can't Stand Still is a more tolerable album, even without a "Boys Of Summer.")

Those first couple Robert Plant albums are weird, by the way -- like pop Ennio Morricone, or something, with dub parts. (At least some songs sound like that.) But I don't think his solo LPs ever did much in P&J til last year's boring Alison Krauss thing.

You're the big Shaken 'n' Stirred fan -- I bought it a few years ago at your recommendation.

I think Plant's first two solo albums might be better, and weirder, though -- or at least more tuneful. Need to go back and check them out again one of these days. I've always liked "Big Log" a lot.

Just finished checking out my $1 copy of Tommy Tutone 2, and beyond the great great great hit, it's as dull as George says it is above. A couple of halfway catchy pop/pub-rock songs -- "Baby It's Alright," "Why Baby Why," "Tonight" -- but nothing anybody would remember two minutes after the album ends. Sounds like a rush job; I wonder if Columbia put them up to it once the single hit (assuming the single preceded the album, which it may or may not have.) Now I'm wondering if their first album might be better, or more new wavey. (Though they really do seem like the epitome of a corporate fake new wave invention -- not always a bad thing, though I bet most people still think Tommy Tutone is one guy.)

George also mentioned Ian Hunter's You're Never Alone With a Schizophrenic up above; personally, I've always been a big fan of that -- easily my favorite solo album by the guy, and I've never had anything against "Just Another Night," though it did get played on Detroit's three AOR stations a ton in 1979. I think I also heard "When The Daylight Comes" a few times on those stations, and maybe "Bastard" once. (By the way, what does Jaxon mean by it being a "beardo fave"? Is that, like, hipster club DJs who play dark and rhythmic old rock songs or something? Because I guess that would make sense; do they play Mott's totally funky "Death May Be Your Santa Claus," too? They should.) Anyway, two songs I never heard AOR stations play off of Hunter's Shizo are the two that eventually became the album's most famous songs -- "Ships" (thanks to Barry Manilow) and "Cleveland Rocks" (thanks to Drew Carey.) Hated the former; loved the latter. Also really liked "Wild East" a lot, too, way back then.

Maybe Detroit stations didn't play "Cleveland Rocks" because it would have implied Detroit didn't? I don't know. (George suggests that radio played it elsewhere. Pretty sure Ian also recorded a version called "England Rocks"; not sure I've ever heard it.)

this era exactly overlaps with my first few years of discovering the radio, so i have more affection for a lot of these than they probably deserve. i think the only albums on the list i actually owned were freeze frame, queen, billy joel and men at work, but i had singles from joan jett, loverboy, john cougar, moody blues, survivor and don henley ("johnny can't read"!). actual favorite album out of the bunch is probably j. geils.

ABBA should have The Visitors on this poll, and it should win.

Yeah Tipsy OTM in the sense that this was a big time for buying singles for me rather than albums. I really don't own that many of these albums but had plenty of singles from them. I'm not quite sure why my pre-pubescent self was so adverse to buying albums. Was it just a lack of money? Or did it just not occur to me? I was too concerned with copying down Casey Kasem's Top 40 every week, I guess. Billy Joel's "Glass Houses" was one of the first albums I bought with my own money and I remember Human League's Dare album seeming like a big deal - "oh wow I'm buying an album for once".

Those first couple Robert Plant albums are weird, by the way

always liked "In the Mood"

This thread has made me think of (and play) Roxy Music's song "Oh Yeah! (On The Radio)" and just because it's all about the radio, innit?

You do realize that probably every single album up above is easily available for $1 or less somewhere, right? Just making sure; you said the words "new remastered version," words which always tend to make me nervous.

I had a lot more of those on vinyl, including Freeze Frame at the time, or shortly after via record clubs. I sold all my vinyl about 14 years ago when my third turntable died. I never had a lot of vinyl, and never liked vinyl. There's plenty of threads on this topic, but to me vinyl represented snobbery, because it only sounded good on pretty expensive equipment way out of my price range. I was all about tapes until I started getting CDs in '88.

Guess I need to hear Don't Say No. I just got the Ian Hunter album mentioned (deluxe remaster woo hoo) last year, and never heard anything from that ever before. He and Mott definitely did not get any airplay on my hometown station.

vinyl represented snobbery, because it only sounded good on pretty expensive equipment

Really? Weird. I've always had the cheapest stereos known to man, and vinyl has always sounded fine to me. It's deluxe CD editions I could never afford.

The stark confessionalisms of Empty Glass don't really seem to belong here; the Who's Face Dances might've been a more appropriate choice.

solo artists on poppier departures from their main classic rock gigs

Yeah, but "Rough Boys," "Cat's In The Cupboard" and "Gonna Get You" rock harder than anything on Face Dances or It's Hard.

vinyl represented snobbery, because it only sounded good on pretty expensive equipment

Eesh. Same here as xhuxk.

any record in good shape will sound decent on a hundred dollar turntable. or even a fifty dollar turntable. too me, vinyl was always anti-snobbery! especially in the cd age. who needs to pay 14.98 list price for something easily found for a buck!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Townsend, Yes and REO Speedwagon it is.

Regarding vinyl, I was referring to the actual time period, in the early 80s, when you couldn't really get much used where I lived. $100 turntable meant it went with a component system that was way beyond our means. Brand new records on our all-in-one Montgomery Wards system sounded like breakfast -- snappin, cracklin, poppin Rice Krispies and sizzlin bacon. Shit made me twitch, and I welcomed cheaper cassettes in my bedroom boombox and Sears walkman ripoff.

Anyway, I picked up Don't Say No for $4.99 at FYE before I got on the train, and it IS awesome! It's what fans might have expected from Robert Plant solo instead of the moody textures of his decent but not rocking albums. I recognize four of the songs, and I like it better than say, Def Leppard for sure. This is the best thing I've gotten out of revisiting this era for sure. I'm gonna have to track down The Tale Of The Tape and Emotions In Motion too.

MOR/AOR/Arena Rock Albums 1983-85

I'm kind of enjoying Uriah Heep's Abominog (1982) and Saga's World's Apart (1981).

How did Let's Dance not walk this?

Would've voted Breakfast In America, what an album

Haven't heard most of these though

Before there was clickbait, there was Chuckbait.

recommendations for the early 80s MOR canon:

the three albums 10cc released between 1980 and 1983 - Look Hear?, Ten Out of 10 and Windows in the Jungle

Cliff Richard's albums from this period, especislly I'm No Hero

it's from 1979, but White Trails by Chris Rainbow

this is maybe more AOR than MOR, but Union Jacks and On the Edge by the Babys

This is still easily Pete Townshend's "Empty Glass". "Rough Boys" alone makes it worth it, and then there's "Let My Love Open The Door".

So xhuxk and gorge both really didn't like Tommy Tutone 2? I'm listening to it for the first time ever today, and really digging it. Reminds me of the first Tom Petty album, great chimey guitars and that marble mouthed vocal that sounds like Van Morrison fronting a power pop band. "Bernadiah" is an ace track.