Middle of the road (music)
Middle of the road (also known by its acronym MOR) is a commercial radio format and
Etymology and usage
According to music academic Norman Abjorensen, "middle of the road" has referred to a commercial radio format more often than a music genre, although "it has been used to describe a broad type of music" of numerous styles, usually characterized by
Soft rock groups like the Association, the 5th Dimension, the Bee Gees, the Johnny Mann Singers and Simon & Garfunkel infiltrated the MOR market in the late 1960s.[3] In the early 1970s, Bread, the Carpenters and John Denver were notable performers in the middle of the road genre. Writing in Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), Robert Christgau said MOR "applied to radio formats that shun or put stringent tempo and volume restrictions on rock, although 'lite' and 'adult contemporary' are now the preferred evasions."[4]
Traditional format
The middle of the road music category has traditionally included these genres:
- Easy listening[5]
- Traditional pop and, later, revivalist recordings of the style[6][7]
- Orchestral ballads
- Show tunes
- Smooth jazz melodies
- Soft rock songs and melodies
- Countrypolitanballads
Peak
As an AM radio format in the
In time, as the listener demographic groups aged and popular music migrated to FM radio, MOR stations found themselves competing with
Criticism
In recent years, the term "middle of the road" has been used pejoratively by genre-specific music aficionados to describe musicians who avoid "edgy" (innovative) material, and who calibrate their musical appeal to commercial, popular musical taste.[10] Artists such as Westlife (pop),[11] Kenny Rogers (country)[12] and Train (rock)[13] are considered middle of the road.
Moreover, MOR has been used to pejoratively describe a musical band's creative and commercial progress from the innovative path to the tried-and-true-pop-catalogue path. For example, Pitchfork's review of Duran Duran's Rio states: "The band peppered the 80s with a number of hot singles (most of which can be found on the unstoppable side A of Rio) before departing for MOR country.",[14] while on a later review of Coldplay's X&Y, Pitchfork writes that: "U2 recorded 'I Will Follow', 'New Year's Day', 'Bad', and The Joshua Tree, among others, before they wandered off into the MOR wilderness."[15]
See also
- Full service radio
- Album-oriented rock (AOR)
- Middlebrow
- MOR Music TV, a defunct music video channel with a home shopping element that mainly carried MOR artists
References
- ISBN 978-1118646052.
- ^ Abjorensen, N. (2017) Historical Dictionary of Popular Music. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 1538102153, 9781538102152.
- ^ Christgau, Robert (September 19, 1977). "Pazz and Jop Diary". The Village Voice. Retrieved December 29, 2018.
- ^ CG 80s: Glossary. Robert Christgau. Retrieved December 29, 2018.
- ISBN 1135456496.
- JSTOR 40071710.
- ^ MOR/Nostalgia/Vintage
- ISBN 978-1441129680.
- ^ Adult Contemporary-COM 418 Radio Programming and Production
- ^ Frere-Jones, Sasha. "On Top". The New Yorker, 3 April 2006, pp. 76–77.
- ^ Lynskey, Dorian (3 December 2003). "Christmas in Popworld" – via The Guardian.
- ^ Tell it all brother: Why you should dig the groovy music of Kenny Rogers and the First Edition-Medium
- ^ "Train : She's On Fire". NME. 12 September 2005.
- ^ Top 100 Albums of the 1980s. Pitchfork.
- ^ Tangari, Joe (June 6, 2005). "Coldplay: X&Y Album Review". Pitchfork.
Further reading
- Engstrom, Erika (2004). "Middle of the Road Format". In Sterling, Christopher H. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Radio. ISBN 1135456496.