What one list got wrong with the Big 4 of 1970s AOR bands

AOR - or album-oriented rock bands - became a niche beginning in the late 1960s. The 1970s were really the heyday of the subgenre, however. Production values had gone up and allowed for slicker sounding albums. This allowed for rock bands to try to sell themselves to more of a mass audience, even that meant the music might not have been as dangerous.

In a recent article by the excellent website Ultimate Classic Rock, the Big 4 of AOR are named. The list was well-thought-out, and explanations were given. The issue with the article is that one of the four bands doesn't truly belong. That band is Boston.

The other three named are Journey, Foreigner, and Styx. Those groups stuck around a lot longer than Boston, even if their music became a bit sappier. Heck, Foreigner became more of a power-ballad band. Journey became a band that keeps in-fighting and suing one another, and Styx...well, yeah. Pretty much like Journey.

A list of the Big 4 of AOR bands leaves one out and keeps one that does not belong

The reason Boston doesn't belong on the list, even though they did have one massive-selling debut album and a couple of others that did well, is because two other groups could be named instead. One of those groups is REO Speedwagon, which had the same kind of career arc as Styx. Both bands had some great rock songs at the beginning of their careers, and then they became a pop mess.

Another group likely more worthy of being mentioned instead of Boston is the Cars. Rick Ocasek and his mates certainly weren't new wave (though they often get grouped in with the subgenre), and they felt that their entire albums should have a chance of being good. But even though, at the beginning, the Cars were a more straightforward rock band, Ocasek still had a pop sensibility. He knew how to make a hit song.

To be fair to all the bands, each delivered a number of long-lasting quality tunes. Foreigner was the only one named in the UCR article that was popular from the beginning. The others had to work harder. The Cars were more like Foreigner in that there was some instant popularity. Journey, Styx, and Foreigner definitely should be on the list, but Boston? Not so much.

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