Adult Oriented Rock is the smooth sound that came out of the USA and became the soundtrack to millions of lives all over the world – a sound defined by timeless anthems such as Boston’s More Than A Feeling, Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’, Survivor’s Eye Of The Tiger and Toto’s Africa, and by monumental power ballads, none bigger than Foreigner’s global smash I Want To Know What LoveIs. In this feature, Classic Rock celebrates the very best of AOR, from the golden age of the 70s and 80s.
Here we present The 50 Greatest AOR Albums Of All Time. Included are some of the biggest-selling records in the history of rock. We also dig deep, going beyond the hits and the household names to shine a light on the cult classics and lost heroes from this golden age. In AOR, as in life, there are winners and losers; for every fairy tale, a thousand hard-luck stories.
Some of the greatest AOR albums were made by artists who never made it big, among them Diving For Pearls, New England, Balance, Giant, White Sister, Valentine and Le Roux. And two now legendary albums were made by a singer who couldn’t get arrested when he was a rock artist, and failed an audition for Black Sabbath before reinventing himself as a soul star – the one and only Michael Bolton.
Equally, while AOR is a quintessentially American art form, a handful of Brits got in on the act, most notably Mick Jones, who founded Foreigner as an expat in New York City in 1977. One of the great AOR voices is Lancashire-born John Waite. And placed high in this Top 50 are albums by British acts FM, Strangeways (fronted by American singer Terry Brock) and Dare (featuring future Professor Brian Cox on keyboards!).
Likewise, while many of the leading American bands live on – including Journey, Boston and Toto – the rebirth of AOR in the new millennium has come from Europe. At its forefront are Scandinavian groups such as Eclipse and H.e.a,t., and the Italian-based record label Frontiers – named after a classic Journey album.
After the lean years of the late 90s, melodic rock rose again, and new albums of real quality are being made, showing that you can’t keep a good genre down for long. In the words that Steve Perry first sang back in 1981: ‘Don’t stop believin’, hold on to that feeling…’
Here, then, are the 50 Greatest AOR Albums Of All Time, each with a "Must have" song selection we've compiled into a Spotify playlist that appears at the end of the feature.
Such was the grip that Paul Sabu exerted over this unforgivably overlooked record that it was rumoured the whole thing was an elaborate ruse, and that Sabu had simply retuned his own voice and taken on a female persona.
Not so. The vocalist is Alexa Anastasia, and the combination of her throaty singing and Sabu’s chest-beating AOR heroics is irresistible.
Must hear: Wanderlust
Before he achieved fame as the singer with Mr. Big, baby-faced Eric Martin was a cult hero with his own band and as a solo artist.
This self-titled album was his best from that period, his soulful voice lighting up quintessentially 80s tunes such as Pictures and a great version of Little Steven’s Lyin’ In A Bed Of Fire.
Must hear: Pictures
Formed in the early 90s by three members of Journey – Gregg Rolie, Ross Valory and Steve Smith – during an almost decade-long hiatus from that band, The Storm were a shortterm fix for the group’s fans.
Despite The Storm being victims of the same Interscope Records boardroom crevice that all but swallowed up Unruly Child and Crown Of Thorns, the Beau Hill-produced delights of this debut replicate the mothership in Mini-Me form.
Must hear: I’ve Got A Lot To Learn About Love
Cher’s great voice, allied to the hit-making prowess of Michael Bolton, Desmond Child, Mark Mangold, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, and a label on one of the great winning streaks in music biz history, was simply too big to fail.
Reinvented as a strutting, barely clothed siren, belting out I Found Someone and We All Sleep Alone, Cher embraced this splendid reawakening as only a true star can.
Must hear: Main Man
46. Drive, She Said: Drive, She Said
It spoke volumes that CBS UK passed on this swoon-inducing debut from former American Tears, Touch, and Michael Bolton keyboard player Mark Mangold and the über-vocalist Al Fritsch, and its pomp-laden charms being shared instead via the independent label Music For Nations.
The soulful approach of Fritsch (who died in 2018) was perfectly complemented by Mangold’s instrumental vision, and the album’s contents are deliciously understated.
Must hear: Hard Way Home
Frustrated by Foreigner’s infighting, their singer Gramm extended the golden run of the band’s 4 and Agent Provocateur with this dazzling first solo record, the impact of which was diluted by his almost immediate return to Journey to make Inside Information.
Let’s face it, Ready Or Not is almost indistinguishable from Foreigner, the elements of tasty hard rock in the title song and the hit Midnight Blue and a textbook ballad in If I Don’t Have You fully being present and deliciously correct.
Must hear: Midnight Blue
44. Seven The Hard Way - Pat Benatar
In 1983, American singer Pat Benatar achieved AOR perfection with the million selling Love Is A Battlefield. Two years later she repeated the trick with another song from hit-maker songwriter Holly Knight, the heroic self-empowerment anthem Invincible.
Elsewhere on Seven The Hard Way, Benatar’s most complete AOR album, she rocks hard in Sex Is A Weapon and breaks hearts with The Art Of Letting Go.
Must hear: Invincible
43. Rescue You - Joe Lynn Turner
After three albums as the singer in Rainbow, peaking with the classic hit single I Surrender, Joe Lynn Turner teamed up with Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker for his solo debut.
And with Al Greenwood (ex-Foreigner) co-writing and playing keyboards the result was high-class radio rock, Turner in full, wig-lifting cry on Young Hearts and Eyes Of Love.
Must hear: Young Hearts
Six of this album’s 10 songs were co-written by ‘outsider’ Bob Halligan Jr, and it was produced by Eddie Kramer and mixed by Ron Nevison. It’s no surprise, then, that Night Of The Crime is one of the best-sounding records of the 1980s.
Vocally, instrumentally and in terms of the songwriting, the album remains a masterpiece of keyboard-drenched melodic hard rock.
Must hear: Shot At My Heart
Equal parts AOR, prog, pomp and pop, Asia’s self-titled debut topped the US chart for nine weeks, selling 10 million copies worldwide. The band comprised members of ELP, Yes and King Crimson, among others, and the addition of former Buggles keyboard maestro Geoff Downes brought Asia a modern edge.
“We took our twelve-minute songs and removed the ten minutes of noodling,” explained their bassist/ singer John Wetton.
Must hear: Heat Of The Moment
One of those great ‘blink and you missed them’ bands, this US Coast-based quartet got just one bite at the cherry.
That they ended up in the bargain bins while inferior rivals triumphed remains quite inexplicable, especially when one considers the super-slick production by the then red-hot Neil Kernon, who slotted Aviator into his schedule between Everybody’s Crazy by Michael Bolton and Queensrÿche’s Rage For Order.
Must hear: Frontline
39. Midnight Madness - Night Ranger
From Night Ranger’s second album came their biggest hit, the power ballad Sister Christian, written and sung by drummer Kelly Keagy. It was a Top-Five smash in the US, and later appeared in a teeth-grinding drug-deal scene in the film Boogie Nights.
But these guys never stopped kicking ass, as proved by the heroically daft (You Can Still) Rock In America.
Must hear: Sister Christian
Tyketto were a band out of time, signing with the major label that had broken Whitesnake and Guns N’ Roses just as another Geffen act, Nirvana, were washing the last of hairmetal down the plughole.
Don’t Come Easy should be taken as a pair with the powerful follow-up Strength In Numbers as a ‘what might have been’ for the wonderfully talented frontman Danny Vaughn. Burning Down Inside and Forever Young remain a genre staples, too.
Must hear: Burning Down Inside
Led by Hugo, a man who took the Steve Perry impersonation beyond mere vocal stylings and into the vaguely creepy approximations of the doppelganger, Valentine achieved a strange kind of AOR immortality with one song from this debut, the ballad Never Said It Was Gonna Be Easy.
Into its seven minutes they packed every cliché, re-spun into a song of emotionally devastating heartbreak from which Hugo may never recover.
Must hear: Never Said It Was Gonna Be Easy
In the late 1980s, excitement greeted news of a liaison between two key songwriters from Journey (Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain) and a pair of former members on The Babys (frontman-turned-solo hitmaker John Waite and future Styx member Ricky Phillips).
And just for once, peerless performance would outstrip the promise of the personnel. No less than five singles were pulled from this debut as it rattled towards a million US sales.
Must hear: When I See You Smile
This is the 40 minutes that reinvented 70s folk rockers Heart as a slick MTV AOR band. For Heart the band jettisoned the acoustic guitars and mandolins in favour of dreamy keyboards, a massive production by Ron Nevison and an occasional searing guitar solo, but all the gloss and bolt-on songwriters couldn’t change the dynamic power of Ann Wilson’s voice.
Heart shifted more than five million copies and yielded four Top 10 hits in the US alone (including their first No.1 with These Dreams, featuring sister Nancy on lead vocals).
Must hear: These Dreams
Still active in their home base of Louisiana, LeRoux were joined by future Toto singer Dennis Frederiksen for this, their fifth album.
Equally at home with the ballads Wait One Minute and Let Me In or more up-tempo moments such as Carrie’s Gone, Turning Point and Lifeline (later recorded by Uriah Heep), the performance from Frederiksen (who passed away in 2014) is superlative.
Must hear: Turning Point
33. In For The Count - Balance
Prior to reuniting for the all-new Equilibrium in 2009, these New Yorkers crafted two excellent releases in the 80s, In For The Count being their second.
Led by singer Peppy Castro, guitarist Bob Kulick and keyboard player Doug Katsaros, their sound was crisp, nimble and very stylish. It’s now possible to pick up the first pair of albums as a single CD, and they’re highly recommended.
Must hear: In For The Count
32. Unruly Child - Unruly Child
Unruly Child teamed the ex-World Trade duo of keyboard player Guy Allison and guitarist Bruce Gowdy with a genuinely world class singer in ex-Signal/King Kobra man Mark Free.
The results were an immaculate, chest-beating mix of AOR, hard rock and melodic metal, although a combination of grunge, record label bungling and Free’s gender confusion stopped the band in its tracks.
Must hear: Who Cries Now
31. Freedom At Point Zero - Jefferson Starship
You will almost certainly know this album’s single, Jane, an all-time classic riffer. Freedom At Point Zero, its parent album, saw the introduction of an uncut diamond named Mickey Thomas on vocals, with Grace Slick and Marty Balin having headed out of the door.
Slick would return two years, later but in the meantime guitarist Craig Chaquico tilted the rudder firmly towards arena-friendly acceptance with the track Rock Music.
Must hear: Jane
30. When Seconds Count - Survivor
This great album could have been even greater had Burning Heart, Survivor’s second Rocky theme hit, not been tied exclusively to the film’s soundtrack.
Even so, When Seconds Count is a monumental achievement – Is This Love is a perfect pop rock song, Rebel Son the most epic track of the band’s career. 1988 followup Too Hot To Sleep is also a doozy.
Must hear: Rebel Son
The sleeve showing a set of crossed fingers behind a backside wearing sprayed-on red leather strides summed up the boisterous optimism of Get Lucky, the second album from fun-loving Canadians Loverboy.
Doug Johnson’s urgent keyboards add depth and colour to the sprightly hooks. No wonder it sold four million copies in the US alone, remaining on the US chart for more than two years.
Must hear: Working For The Weekend
28. Fashion By Passion - White Sister
From LA, and named after a Toto song, White Sister made a fine debut album in 1984, full of heavy pomp rock and produced by former Angel star Gregg Giuffria.
Fashion By Passion, the group’s second and final album, was even better – less pompous, more melodic and capped by a glorious version of The Beatles’ Ticket To Ride.
Must hear: Ticket To Ride
27. Last Of The Runaways - Giant
The history of AOR is littered with unheralded greatness, and Giant, who recorded this stellar debut, lie among the fallen. At the forefront of the band was Dann Huff, who matched his virtuosity on guitar with a voice made for radio.
There is a touch of sad grandeur about Last Of The Runaways that few can match, from the big hit I’ll See You In My Dreams to the diamond chorus of Hold Back The Night.
Must hear: Innocent Days
The quality of John Waite’s voice and his acute ear for a good song built one of the great, unheralded British rock careers.
From The Babys, where he worked with Jonathan Cain, through this solo incarnation that yielded the enduring Missing You, and on to Bad English, where he reunited with Cain alongside Neal Schon, he has made hits. No Brakes sums up his uncomplicated, hook-heavy approach.
Must hear: Missing You
Some consider Paradise Theater the last truly great heyday-era Styx album. It saw the band commandeer the abandonment of a run-down local cinema as metaphor for American society as a whole.
That might sound unexciting in principle, but songs such as Too Much Time On My Hands and The Best Of Times were quite extraordinary.
Must hear: Rockin’ The Paradise
24. Agent Provocateur - Foreigner
It started with a bang – Tooth And Nail, one of Foreigner’s heaviest songs.
But the true measure of this album is in two of the greatest power ballads of all time: I Want To Know What Love Is, elevated by a gospel choir, a UK and US No.1; and That Was Yesterday, a perfectly crafted song of profound sadness.
Must hear: That Was Yesterday
The addition of Terry Brock, an American singer blessed with a golden voice, should have made this Glasgow-based band into superstars. Alas record label issues intervened, but Native Sons remains all all-time cult classic.
In his Kerrang! review at the time, Derek Oliver called Native Sons “the greatest and most preciously perfect melodic AOR album of all time”, and today it still sounds incredible.
Must hear: Goodnight LA
In search of perfection, Boston’s maverick leader Tom Scholz fussed over this album for so long that he was sued for breach of contract by record company CBS before signing to rival MCA.
As a result, Third Stage was his greatest victory, a brilliant concept album (boy-toman stuff), with the beautiful ballad Amanda hitting No.1 in America.
Must hear: Amanda
Dare’s first and best album is so supremely AOR that it features two keyboard players – Darren Wharton, the group’s leader and singer, formerly of Thin Lizzy, and Brian Cox, who later became famous as a scientist and TV presenter.
There is epic drama in Abandon and The Raindance, and in King Of Spades a beautiful elegy for Wharton’s late mentor Phil Lynott.
Must hear: Abandon
20. Richard Marx - Richard Marx
In the summer of 1987, who could resist Richard Marx? Chiseled, mulletted and in possession of a collection of instant AOR classics, Marx was everyone’s favourite boy-crush, cheeky one moment, heartbroken the next.
From Should’ve Known Better to those Endless Summer Nights, we remember every moment. He also had a former cast member of The Waltons on guitar.
Must hear: Should’ve Known Better
19. Diving For Pearls - Diving For Pearls
At the end of the 80s, this New York band sounded like the future of AOR, their flawless debut album delivering ultramelodic songs with a modern dynamic, as illustrated by the anthem Gimme Your Good Lovin’.
They also had a unique voice in Danny Malone. Even though the album sold 250,000, Epic Records dropped the band. It remains a lost classic.
Must hear: Gimme Your Good Lovin’
18. Eye Of The Tiger - Survivor
The song that made Survivor famous was written for the smash-hit boxing movie Rocky III at the request of its star, Sylvester Stallone.
Eye Of The Tiger punched its way to No.1 all over the world, and the parent album, which included another era-defining anthem in American Heartbeat, was the band’s best with original vocalist Dave Bickler.
Must hear: Eye Of The Tiger
17. Michael Bolton - Michael Bolton
Everybody’s Crazy is Michael Bolton’s masterpiece, but the album he made before it is a classic in its own right, loaded with great songs such as Fool’s Game, Hometown Hero and Can’t Hold On, Can’t Let Go, all sung as only Bolton can.
A masterful version of The Supremes hit Back In My Arms Again was a signpost to his future.
Must hear: Fool’s Game
Thirty-two years after its release, Indiscreet is still the greatest UK AOR album ever made, filled with perfectly crafted songs including That Girl, Frozen Heart and I Belong To The Night, and Steve Overland’s heroic performance on the record reminds us why he’s nicknamed The Voice.
FM’s follow-up, Tough It Out, featuring the Desmond Child-assisted Bad Luck, is another masterpiece
Must hear: That Girl
On this, his first solo album, released when he was still Journey’s singer, Steve Perry mixed soft rock and soul to brilliant effect, scoring a huge US hit with Oh Sherrie, a shout-out to his then girlfriend.
His second solo record, 1994’s For The Love Of Strange Medicine, is as overwrought as its title suggests, but on Street Talk simplicity is genius.
Must hear: Oh Sherrie
Unsurprisingly, they were from New England (Boston, actually, but someone had already nicked that as a band name), and this debut album, co-produced by Paul Stanley of Kiss, is a masterclass in what frontman John Fannon called “power-melodic song-oriented rock”.
Hello, Hello, Hello has shades of Jeff Lynne, and Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya, a glorious pomp-rock anthem, was a minor US hit that should have made them bigger than Jesus.
Must hear: Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya
Toto is the sound of a genre beginning to crystallise, Hold The Line an early example of what American radio rock would become.
It was trampled by the press when it was released, but the divide between the critics and the public was already apparent as musicians and radio programmers tried to find an audience not served elsewhere. A milestone.
Must hear: Hold The Line
1977 wasn’t all about punk rock. It was also a defining year for the less fashionable exponents of AOR, with Foreigner’s debut a multimillion-seller.
Feels Like The First Time and Cold As Ice were US Top 10 hits, and for the next 10 years the hits kept coming.
Must hear: Cold As Ice
11. Welcome To The Real World - Mr. Mister
Singer Richard Page almost joined Toto, but instead found fame, albeit fleetingly, with Mr. Mister.
This, their second album, a perfect hybrid of melodic rock and new wave, yielded two US No.1s in Broken Wings, a ballad as immaculate as The Cars’ Drive, and Kyrie, a ringing, quasi-spiritual anthem.
Must hear: Kyrie
10. Hi Infidelity - REO Speedwagon
What made REO Speedwagon’s ninth album their first US No.1 were two hits delivering an iron fist in a velvet glove.
For all the melodic uplift in the ballad Keep On Loving You (also US No.1) and the rockier Take It On The Run, the lyrics spoke of love as war. Classic songs, quintessential AOR.
Must hear: Keep On Loving You
9. Everybody’s Crazy - Michael Bolton
Before the transformation into superstar soul singer and Mullet King, Michael Bolton rocked.
With a voice so powerful that he once auditioned for Black Sabbath, he delivered in Everybody’s Crazy a melodic rock tour de force, with the anthem Save Our Love and the power ballad Call My Name its devastating emotional peaks.
Must hear: Save Our Love
The last record Journey made with Steve Perry during his initial and most important time in the band, Raised On Radio is an artistic high point that for many surpasses even Escape and Frontiers in terms of songwriting and performance.
Perry’s grip on Raised On Radio is evident: it is a masterclass that cemented him as a vocalist without equal.
Must hear: Girl Can’t Help It
With twin-guitar firepower, two great singers and killer songs, Night Ranger’s Dawn Patrol was the best American rock debut since Van Halen’s.
A signature sound was defined by the blazing energy of Don’t Tell Me You Love Me and the melodic finesse of Sing Me Away. The record’s unsung hero was geeky keyboard ninja Alan ‘Fitz’ Gerald.
Must hear: Don’t Tell Me You Love Me
1982 was the year that Toto ruled the world. Crack session musicians and hit songwriters, they were heavily involved in what became the biggest-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Their own album Toto IV was huge too, selling millions via its smash hit singles Rosanna, I Won’t Hold You Back and Africa. A soft-rock behemoth – critics be damned!
Must hear: Africa
If ever there was a hard act to follow, it was Escape, the all-conquering masterpiece that had made Journey the biggest rock act in America. But when the heat was on, Journey didn’t falter.
What they delivered with Frontiers was another multi-platinum hit, another classic. Separate Ways (Worlds Apart), the album’s opening track, is the ultimate heavy melodic rock anthem, its dramatic tone set in Jonathan Cain’s neon-bright keyboard intro, the band blasting at full power, and Steve Perry hitting high notes and a deep emotional intensity that made him the greatest singer of his generation.
Faithfully is the definitive power ballad, with Perry’s voice again at its absolute peak. Edge Of The Blade is arguably Journey’s heaviest song. The title track, tricksy and unconventional, has a flavour of early-80s Rush. And After The Fall and Send Her My Love are two more supreme ballads from the undisputed masters of the art. Most extraordinary of all is that this brilliant album could have been even better.
In a bizarre decision, two glorious songs, Only The Young and Ask The Lonely, did not make the cut. And while one substitution in their place was the wonderfully atmospheric Troubled Child, the other, Back Talk, was a complete turkey, perhaps the worst song the band ever recorded, and the one flaw in what was otherwise a work of genius.
Must hear: Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)
In 1983, just a year after Survivor hit big with Eye Of The Tiger, the band were in deep shit. Singer Dave Bickler, suffering from damaged vocal cords, got through the next album, Caught In The Game, but his exit from Survivor followed quickly. For Bickler it was heartbreaking, for the band a potential career killer.
As keyboard player Jim Peterik said: “Very few bands survive a lead singer transplant.” But what they found in Jimi Jamison was a guy with a one-in-a-million voice. And what Survivor created in Vital Signs, their first album with Jamison, was a comeback hit and the pinnacle of the band’s career.
“Jimi had the most magical voice I’ve ever heard,” Peterik said. Equally, Jamison was gifted some of the greatest songs ever written by Peterik and guitarist Frankie Sullivan: glorious anthems I Can’t Hold Back and It’s The Singer Not The Song, and the masterful ballad The Search Is Over.
Of the latter, Peterik recalled: “To hear Jimi sing the shit out of it, I knew it was a hit.” Vital Signs was the album on which Survivor reached their creative peak, and Jamison delivered the greatest performance of his life. As Peterik said after the singer’s death in 2014: “Jimi was one of the greats.”
Must hear: I Can’t Hold Back
Disappointed by just three million sales of their previous album, and bickering incessantly, Foreigner were down to a four-piece for their fourth album.
Inspired by producer Mutt Lange’s work with City Boy, Foreigner invited him to help their revised band find their feet. Although Lange could be notoriously difficult, “we were lucky to catch Mutt before he became completely maniacal,” guitarist Mick Jones once told Classic Rock.
Juke Box Hero, Urgent and Woman In Black vindicated this decision, the sleek ballad Waiting For A Girl Like You whetting most of the group’s appetite for more of the same.
Must hear: Juke Box Hero
The album made by boffin Tom Scholz in his basement was the biggest-selling debut of all time until Appetite For Destruction a decade later.
During the making of his masterpiece, over five long years, Tom Scholz led a dual life. Between shifts as a design engineer for Polaroid, he’d be locked away in his home studio in Boston. “It was my escape from the world,” he said. But the music he created would find an audience of millions.
All but one track of Boston’s debut album was created in Scholz’s basement. It’s a classic, landmark album, immaculately crafted and full of great songs: Peace Of Mind, Smokin’, the epic Foreplay/Long Time and, greatest of all, More Than A Feeling, Boston’s definitive statement and one of the beautiful rock songs ever written, its emotional intensity heightened by the majestic wail of singer Brad Delp.
Must hear: More Than A Feeling
AOR’s shimmering and colossal peak, Escape may have its edges dulled by the familiarity of its best-known songs, yet that should not detract from the album’s majesty. It pulls together everything that is glorious and important about the genre and distills it sublimely.
They may have unkindly christened Steve Perry ‘the duck’ after some of those high notes, but the critics are simply eating his dirt.
History has been kind to Escape. As far back as 1988 the readers of Kerrang! voted it AOR’s greatest album, and there it remains, probably in perpetuity.
But beyond the confines of genre it has enjoyed an afterlife bathed in nostalgia for the version of American youth that it captured, a time long gone except in the memory. There, Escape lives.
Must hear: Don’t Stop Believin’
