Genre Dictionary - AOR

I've referenced this before, and the term is obscure enough that it deserves a decent explanation instead of my usual sarcasm-laden posts from this category.

AOR stands for album-oriented rock, and was, essentially, the first major type of alternative radio. The format got its start when FM stations were prohibited from echoing the playlists of their AM counterparts, who predominately played major singles, in the late-60s. Fortunately, the mid-60s had ushered in an era of album-based experimentation, marking the beginning of the LP as the main form of artist expression. This, in turn, had its origins in the late-50s concept albums put out by Frank Sinatra (which included major critical successes like No One Cares, Come Fly With Me, and Sinatra's personal favorite of his discography, Only The Lonely).

The LP-as-artistic-statement got a further boost from the Beatles' post-Rubber Soul output, especially the landmark Sgt. Pepper album. Suddenly flush with songs, FM DJs began playing songs that hadn't been selected as singles, giving them a much wider range of material to work with.

The end result was that a certain branch of music was suddenly given a great deal of widely played material, especially during the 70s. One key example is the Eagles; many of their best known songs (such as "Desperado") were never issued as singles, meaning the distribution of such tracks was due to the AOR format.

The format is extraordinarily wide-reaching (its influence can be seen in college radio and most alternative stations, who play bands that probably never had singles in the first place) but the stations that fell directly into the form disappeared in the late-80s and early-90s... to be replaced by classic rock stations. Which is why the term AOR tends to crop up so much.

Pop Music Canon - Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson is the second-most recognizable artist/group of all time, standing neck-and-neck with The Beatles. Unfortunately, much of this attention is based more in questioning his personal life than admiring his oftentimes brilliant musical output. Because of this, I again encounter the problem of a topic covered once too many, so I'm not going to waste time with a summary of what everyone knows. Instead, I'm going to focus on Jackson's significance in my overall flowchart of pop music.

I've mentioned earlier that The Beatles represented a divisive moment in pop history. There is pre-Beatles pop (crooners, vocal jazz, rockabilly, and rock and roll) and post-Beatles pop (what we understand as classic rock, blue-eyed soul [also popularized by Roy Orbison], and psychedelic rock). In the same way, there is pre-Jackson pop (disco, New Wave, synthpop) and post-Jackson pop (contemporary R&B, neo-soul, R&B, new jack swing, modern dance music). Both groups were important in how they combined the elements that came before them into what came after them; you could consider the two groups as bottlenecks in simplified schematics of pop music (note that this excludes metal, punk, and goth, which are basically small sub-groups of the mainstream).

In radio terms, Michael Jackson brought about both the end and beginning of classic rock. Before Jackson and the pop music of the late 80s (think Madonna), classic rock existed as AOR stations (previously discussed in the Roy Orbison post), which played the same basic music but with a slightly larger setlist. The name change, I suspect, was due to a shift in perspective; before Michael Jackson, AOR still existed on the fringes of pop music. Artists fitting into the genre were still accumulating (and would continue to do so through the end of the decade, albeit at a slower pace) and were exhibiting influences from the rest of the pop spectrum (AOR + synthpop = Steve Perry's Journey, for example). After Michael Jackson, pop music consolidated/collapsed around him and R&B as a whole, leaving AOR in limbo. AOR was no longer pop, but there was still some demand for it. Therefore, canny corporations created classic rock, and DJs perpetuated it.

This was the last major divisive moment of pop history. Modern pop (contemporary R&B) carries the indelible mark of Michael Jackson, and will continue to do so until the next breath of fresh air comes along. My guess? Synthrock.

Classic Rock Apocrypha - Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison (briefly known as "The Big O" before that one got creepy) is one of the oddest omissions from classic rock that I know of, and was one of my main inspirations for starting this blog in the first place. The one song you're likely to know of is "Oh, Pretty Woman", but even that hardly gets touched by radio stations. My generation, along with the previous, mainly knows that tune from the Julia Roberts movie that shared its name.

Which brings us to the subject of Roy's popularity. Back in the early 60s, Roy was one of the biggest names in rockabilly and blue-eyed soul, maybe THE biggest. When he opened for The Beatles he enjoyed a preposterous fourteen encore show, despite being a solo performer opening for one of the biggest British groups of the time. Did I mention the show was in England? Right after Please Please Me?

Unfortunately, this popularity diminished considerably during the late 60s and 70s, due in no small part to the onset of the British Invasion. For better or worse, Orbison never really changed the style of his music throughout his career, an was thus left behind the rapidly changing pop scene. Never really hurting for money, he retired from touring, aside from a few shows in foreign countries where he maintained his monumental fanbase.

As I alluded to earlier, Orbison's comeback was largely due to the use of his songs in other forms. Linda Ronstadt had a major hit with Orbison's "Blue Bayou" in 1977 and Don McLean covered "Crying" three years later, achieving similar success. What really brought Orbison back into the spotlight was the use of his song, "In Dreams", in David Lynch's 1986 neo-noir film, Blue Velvet. The usage was... memorable to say the least (a demented lip syncing session followed by Dennis Hopper using the lyrics as a threat) and it put The Big O back in the public eye.

1988 saw Orbison capitalize on his new found popularity: he featured on the all-star supergroup The Traveling Wilburys; released a new album, Mystery Girl, featuring a song co-written by Bono himself, "She's A Mystery To Me"; and released a live album/video featuring yet another all-star band playing backup (Black And White Night). His resurgence was tragically cut short by his death the same year.

So why isn't he better known? In all likelihood, it's down to simple timing. Classic rock stations evolved out of a station type known as AOR (album-oriented rock), which developed during the late 70s, continuing on through the 80s as an alternative to the now burgeoning disco/R&B craze. Orbison, omitted from popular music over the course of the 70s, missed his chance for preservation by a few short years. Had his popularity come back during the early 80s, before Michael Jackson split the airwaves, you'd probably be hearing "In Dreams" every three hours instead of "Sunday Bloody Sunday".

Classic Rock Canon - The Beatles

When discussing classic rock, or rock/pop music in general, The Beatles are an unavoidable feature. If popular music is a planet, The Beatles are a moon. There is no group more significant to our modern conception of rock and roll; the very name has become something of a logo for the genre as a whole.

This all makes them an extraordinarily boring subject to discuss, mainly because there is very little left to discuss. I'm willing to bet that every music critic/journalist active in the past thirty years has written at least one article/review/blog post that referenced the Fab Four, and at least half of them have probably reviewed a Beatles album or discussed their history. The well is dry.

There are still a few things I consider worthy of consideration though.

- Unlike every other band I can think of (especially for the era in question) every song The Beatles put to record has a reasonable chance of being played on a radio station (with a few exceptions ["Wild Honey Pie", "Revolution 9", etc, etc]). They are one of the scant few exceptions to the "one/two a day" rule I mentioned in my introduction to this subject.
- The modern conception of twee music can be traced back to a single song, "Yesterday". That song is the blueprint for every Jason Mraz song you will ever hear.
- Similarly, punk music can be traced back to "Revolution", as well as a number of other 60s groups (that I'll cover later in the Apocrypha). The Beatles were one of the first mainstream groups to make significant use of audio distortion.
- Studio experimentation was brought to the forefront. People will argue that Pink Floyd did it better, but The Beatles sold more records with it. Among other things, this means that Autotune can be traced back to John complaining about how terrible his voice was.
- They would have never existed without Jayne Mansfield (more on that later).