So what will the parameters of the journal be? Very simple and that is the best 10 AOR albums each year from 1975 to somewhere in the 1990s. Initially though 1975-1977 will be a combined listing as the genre was in its early days at this time.
How have we decided to do this top 10 album list? We'll each select what we feel are the best AOR albums each year, which will probably be around 15-25 albums in total. We'll then take a vote each with the best album getting the highest points and working down to the weakest which will get just one point. The two of us will then combine our points which will give us our top 10 and the rest will be eliminated.
So how will each year's listing work? We'll each review five albums each within the year listing and look to get a review or two out weekly, so it will be a long project.
How have we qualified which albums are on here? The trickiest part without a doubt, as we disagreed initially on which bands should be in and which bands should be out. In the end the deciding factor was what was the actual core sound of the band? For example bands like Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Chicago and Fleetwood Mac amongst many others were eliminated despite the fact that they were all highly influential on AOR, as in the end we felt that the core sound of these bands was in something else such as jazz rock, soft rock, blues rock, country rock, yacht rock, R&B, soul, pop or even a combination of those styles rather than in what would become known as AOR. Some of these bands of course would later steer into an AOR direction, which will of course qualify them when the time comes. A number of progressive rock bands were eliminated as well, which put a lot of those great early Kansas albums out of the window.
So who did this leave us with? Bands like Journey, Boston or Toto that despite having roots elsewhere mostly dropped those roots or as in the case of Journey adopted an AOR line when new members joined the band. Any band that was considered pomp rock and some borderline AOR/progressive rock bands also made the list and of course anything that was pure AOR from the word go.
@ OccultHawk Yes it means that as well.
