Adult Orientated Rock

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When Adult Orientated rock ( AOR ) is rock music called, the target group is mainly adult listeners and which had its heyday in the early 1980s. The music was thus differentiated from bands such as Sweet , Slade or the Bay City Rollers , which were mainly heard by teenagers and whose song texts often revolved around issues of puberty. AOR bands were also about topics like love and relationships, but lyrically more mature and with an older audience in mind. AOR also uses the terms mainstream rock or melodic rock as well as arena rock, stadium rock or classic rock.

AOR as a music genre is generally understood by music journalists to be keyboard-heavy , well-composed rock music with professional singing and sophisticated production, which is characterized by a strong commercial orientation and a high degree of catchiness. The songs usually have a positive mood and are often suitable for singing along due to the distinctive and hymn-like refrains. Pathetic rock ballads (“power ballads”), which are often among the most commercially successful songs by AOR bands (e.g. I Want to Know What Love Is by Foreigner or Don't Stop Believin ) play an important role ' by Journey ). AOR bands were able to celebrate great commercial successes especially in the 1980s and produced an enormous number of hits that are still regularly played on the radio today (see famous songs ).

The term AOR was first used in the United States in the late 1970s for music that mixed typical hard rock elements with sophisticated pop music . The role models for AOR are mainly soft rock bands like the Eagles , Fleetwood Mac or America , who poured the harmonious West Coast sound of bands like Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young into catchy and radio-compatible rock songs. Perhaps the first AOR album is the self-titled debut of the American band Boston , which contains the world hit More Than a Feeling and sold 17 million copies.

AOR was strongly influenced by North America: The most important bands such as Journey, Foreigner, Toto , REO Speedwagon , Styx or Survivor came from the USA and were most successful here, important representatives from Canada were primarily Bryan Adams and Heart . AOR was also successful in Europe, but trends like new wave , disco or synth-pop dominated here . Nevertheless, some well-known AOR bands such as Asia , Magnum or FM come from at least England with their genre-typical album Indiscreet . Due to the great commercial success of these bands, hard rock bands such as Aerosmith , Van Halen , ZZ Top , Nazareth (with their last world hit Dream on ), Slade (with My Oh My ) or Rainbow approached them in the course of the 1980s keyboard-heavy AOR sound.

As the most commercial representative of rock music, AOR often played an important role in the film music industry , not least through the successful songs Eye of the Tiger and Burning Heart by the American band Survivor , which star in the popular Rocky films with Sylvester Stallone .

At the end of the 1980s the genre was in decline: Although there was a second wave of melodic rock bands like Winger , Giant or Mr. Big , the tone was now set by sleaze rock bands like Guns n 'Roses , which were again a rawer one Maintained the sound and, in contrast to the more "good" AOR bands, propagated the classic credo of "Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll". With the advent of grunge in the early 90s, the heyday of AOR was finally over.

Frankie Sullivan, guitarist of Survivor, summed up AOR as follows: “In the seventies, the musicians were in the foreground - long solos and jam sessions dominated the stage. In the eighties the song moved a little more into focus. There were still good musicians, but people wanted to hear songs that were the soundtrack to their lives. From 1983 to 1988 it was a real pleasure to listen to the radio. "

Known albums (chronological)

Well-known songs (chronological)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gold & Platinum - RIAA . In: RIAA . ( riaa.com [accessed March 15, 2017]).
  2. ↑ Melodic Rock Special: Juke Box Heroes . In: Eclipsed Rockmagazin . No. 86 . Sysyphus Verlags GmbH, October 2006, p. 41 .