AOR (Adult Oriented Rock)

I know people here are big into the really wild stuff, but some of my favorite music has actually been more in the soft rock category. We're familiar with AOR as in "Album Oriented Rock/Radio" but AOR to the Japanese means something different, that being "Adult Oriented Rock". This is like a conglomeration of soft rock, r&b/soul, jazz, bossa nova, and funk.

Some compilations I've found from Japan are ones like "Cruisin" which features selections from Rupert Holmes, Toto, Chicago, Kalapana, Michael Jackson (early stuff), 10cc, and some others you may or may not know of like Airplay and Jay Graydon's work. Some Japanese artists in the genre that I really like are Ginji Ito, Junichi Inagaki, Akira Terao, and Omega Tribe (all three incarnations). I think even Michael Franks would be lumped into this category.

I guess you could say that this definition of AOR is kind of like adult contemporary from the late 70s/early 80s.

I dig a lot of that stuff! That Airplay album is really good! Pages(pre-Mr. Mister band) is some good stuff as well, I have all three releases. And I absolutely love ONJ from Totally Hot thru Gaia. The first Joseph Williams album comes to mind.

"Adult oriented" makes it sound like it's nothing but porn soundtracks.

AOR used to mean Album Oriented Rock. It's was a great format and they played just about anything. The original AOR was replaced with the Classic Rock Format.

mikeinfla wrote:

AOR used to mean Album Oriented Rock. It's was a great format and they played just about anything. The original AOR was replaced with the Classic Rock Format.

Irrelevant to this thread.

Anyway, I believe the stuff the OP named is usually defined as "West Coast rock".

TheGreatDuck wrote:

mikeinfla wrote:

AOR used to mean Album Oriented Rock. It's was a great format and they played just about anything. The original AOR was replaced with the Classic Rock Format.

Irrelevant to this thread.

Not irrelevant to this thread because it still causes confusion.

It's already made clear in both the title and the OP it's about the adult-OR (even though it's actually just about one AOR subgenre, so the thread title should be changed), not the radio format. Besides, every time we have an AOR thread here, someone seems to start this useless debate with "AOR doesn't stand for adult-oriented, it's album-oriented", or "AOR is a radio format, not a music genre", etc etc., and instead of discussing the bands and music, half of the thread ends up turning into a useless debate.