Modern AOR needs to learn from the first Giant record. The unashamed look at melodic rock.

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

Journey had hit singles, but they also produced varied, layerd records that were solid all the way through...

Very true, can't disagree with that, when I was pre-teen and teenager, they already had crossed over to Top 40 radio and I knew them mostly from their singles. Hell, I did not even know they were almost a prog band in their pre-Steve Perry era.

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

Journey had hit singles, but they also produced varied, layerd records that were solid all the way through...

Well, I was referring to the 3 pre-Perry records, which, unless, I am mistaken, were not producing stand alone #1 hits like "Anyway You Want It", or even "Wheel in the Sky".

ZombieHavoc wrote:

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

Journey had hit singles, but they also produced varied, layerd records that were solid all the way through...

Well, I was referring to the 3 pre-Perry records, which, unless, I am mistaken, were not producing stand alone #1 hits like "Anyway You Want It", or even "Wheel in the Sky".

Correct...but those songs topped out far away from #1.

Wheel In The Sky reached #57
Any Way You Want It reached #23

Journey never even broke Top 10 until Who's Cryin' Now in 1981...that went to #4. Their highest charting single, Open Arms, stopped at #2.

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

ZombieHavoc wrote:

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

Journey had hit singles, but they also produced varied, layerd records that were solid all the way through...

Well, I was referring to the 3 pre-Perry records, which, unless, I am mistaken, were not producing stand alone #1 hits like "Anyway You Want It", or even "Wheel in the Sky".

Correct...but those songs topped out far away from #1.

Wheel In The Sky reached #57
Any Way You Want It reached #23

Journey never even broke Top 10 until Who's Cryin' Now in 1981...that went to #4. Their highest charting single, Open Arms, stopped at #2.

Ok, well then change it too *big* hits. Obviously, Journey had some serious, big time hits, after Perry joined the band.

All I was saying is that pre-Perry, Journey could have been correctly referred to as album-oriented rock, based on the defintion of the genre term others have given in this thread. And when their style changed to a more singles-friendly whatever, the description just stuck.

Hell with it though, and hell with semantics. Journey, Bon Jovi, Springsteen, Harem Scarem, Air Kraft, Foreigner, Def Leppard, Poison, Aviator, Loverboy, Michael Bolton, Rick Springfield, FM, House of Lords, W.E.T., and Heart are all melodic rock/AOR.

I was surprised to learn to ' Don't Stop Believin' only made it to #50 or 60 something on the charts

Quote :

Hell with it though, and hell with semantics. Journey, Bon Jovi, Springsteen, Harem Scarem, Air Kraft, Foreigner, Def Leppard, Poison, Aviator, Loverboy, Michael Bolton, Rick Springfield, FM, House of Lords, W.E.T., and Heart are all melodic rock/AOR.

Yup

Quote :

I was surprised to learn to ' Don't Stop Believin' only made it to #50 or 60 something on the charts

I think it was higher than that...but Wiki shows #9 (incorporating 2009 positions, though). Stone In Love was released as a single...but did not apparently even break Top 200 because it has no US chart number.

Lights only reached #68...their first Top 20 was Lovin, Touchin, Squeezin @ #16. That was the highest charting single until the Escape era.

Shawn would know, you guys.  

Orion Crystal Ice wrote:

Shawn would know, you guys.  

Damn right...  

So instead of a perversion of an already existing term, Adult Oriented Rock is really just another lazy musical sub-genre in a world where 80% of all sub-genres shouldn't exist in the first place. Good to know, saves me the time of giving a shit from here on out. (not that I did in the first place)  

I thought maybe Traci Lords would be classified as adult-oriented rock.

Orion Crystal Ice wrote:

I thought maybe Traci Lords would be classified as adult-oriented rock.

...or the Mentors. Back in the day you had be 18 years of age to buy their albums 'n' everything.

S.D. wrote:

Good to know, saves me the time of giving a shit from here on out.  (not that I did in the first place)  

Well...you cared enough to participate in the discussion. That's some level of care.

SAHB Healer wrote:

One of my fave bands "Ten" gets called AOR, and I don't have a problem with that because Gary Hughes always has about two Bolton-like songs on every album (extremely skip-worthy despite the excellence of the rest of his stuff).

Ten is another great band but yeah,I find them to be melodic hard rock. Gary Hughes is the man and obviously you've heard Once and Future King (Parts 1&2)

Ok, take Place Vendome. I see them called AOR but by what is being said here it's Melodic Hard Rock. Right?

Whatever it's called I find much of it to hit the spot at certain times. Take Work of Art, an updated Toto sound with a great hook.