45 is a series of 45 playlists, available on Spotify, and accompanying songs based on them, which you can hear at soundcloud.com/jonny_brick
Clive Davis turns 90 on April 2 2022. If you follow music business lore and myth, you’ll know Clive is one of the three or four most important executives in the history of the record business, along with David Geffen, Berry Gordy, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. They’re businessmen first, music fans second, and as with any businessmen they need a return on their investment and to predict what people will want before they want it.
Thus, a genre of music which appeals to as wide an audience as possible has come into existence and it’s this genre which kicks off my quest to examine music in all its forms. At the end of this show I’ll try to write a song that reflects the music I have learned about today.
As I spent a week listening to music which is classed as MOR, the second season of Bridgerton arrived on Netflix. It is made to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, and its multiethnic cast combine with instrumental string quartet versions of pop songs to tell a very familiar tale of women in corsets choosing their dukes.
Middle of the Road music, or MOR, is what you get on radio stations like Magic FM or KYXY 96.5 which we used to have when we headed to California every year. It was perfect for drives from LA to San Diego, nothing too loud and indeed it was a ‘soft rock’ station that played AC: Adult Contemporary.
The excellent Sean Ross, who blogs about music radio, wrote a piece in 2017 which rounded up the sort of acts who remained Middle of the Road during the rock’n’roll explosion. I’ll refer to his categorisation as I put together a compilation of 40 songs, many of which I’ll mention in this broadcast.
One sort of act started in rock but showed, writes Sean Ross, ‘their sophisticated sound’ which made money. Based on the Charles Trenet song La Mer, Beyond The Sea by Bobby Darin brought the band sound to the pop charts and Darin’s impressive vocal performance made it burst out of the speakers. I have omitted the French Elvis, Johnny Halliday, and the British Elvis, Cliff Richard, but I feel I can get enough singers to have a whole Top 40 of Elvises.
Paul Anka also took a French tune, Comme D’Habitude, and turned it into My Way. He also wrote the song (You’re) Having My Baby, an American number one in spite of its sexual politics which were out of step with the second-wave feminism sweeping the country at the time. The shuffling beat and gentle arrangement mimics the repeated use of the word ‘lovely’ in the first verse. The second verse is taken by the uncredited female vocalist Odia Coates who loves what’s going through her. Anka commends the fact that she didn’t have an abortion, mere months after women’s right to terminate a pregnancy was enshrined in US law.
Neil Sedaka was a teenpop writer for Connie Francis and also played piano on Darin’s tune Dream Lover. Elton John resurrected his career in the 70s, when he had a hit with a song about laughing in the rain called Laughter In The Rain where not even the weather can dampen his spirits.
Which of Elvis Presley’s many Vegas ballads should join the MOR playlist? Having ironed out the creases in his shirt, and exhausted himself with plenty of rubbish movies, his latest trick was to let the heck out of ballads. Always On My Mind, The Wonder of You, If I Can Dream, An American Trilogy (which quoted the Battle Hymn of the Republic best known as the football chant Glory Glory Man United). All are MOR ballads slathered in strings. I’ll go for If I Can Dream, a song about universal brotherhood, because of the twinkling intro and dynamic tension in the song, and because it concluded his ’68 Comeback Special in honour of the late Martin Luther King.
There’s a reason Frank Sinatra is Simon Cowell’s favourite singer. It’s the type of voice that reaches across the generations, linking crooners, big band, orchestral pop and singer/songwriter. It’s unfair to categorise Sinatra as MOR, especially because he was the original teen idol in the 1940s. When he grew up and grew into his voice, the fine string arrangements of Nelson Riddle were perfect for songs about depression, lost love and going out at night. Two marriages broke down, including to the beautiful Ava Gardner, so he could imbue the songs with autobiography.
Using the Great American Songbook as a guide, Sinatra used his instrument, his voice, to emote and connect with the listener. It’s the first of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, as the 7” era became the album era and people had the patience to listen to a complete body of work. Of all the tracks on Wee Small Hours to define MOR, I’ll go with something which isn’t too sad or glum: I Get Along Without You Very Well.
Record executive and the A in A&M Herb Alpert did not actually form a brass section called Tijuana Brass. It was just a way to package music for popular consumption and was actually Herb overdubbing his own trumpet before he had to find a group to look the part and avoid claims of misrepresentation! Herb just turned 87 on March 31, having been born in 1935 to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. He was part of the famous USC Marching Band in California and stayed there to write songs including Sam Cooke’s smooth Wonderful World, which trots around the school timetable before concluding that love is great. It’s no surprise that A&M was home to The Carpenters and Bill Medley, one of the Righteous Brothers.
Unchained Melody remains one of the most successful copyrights in the last century. Four versions of the song got into the UK charts including one by Liberace, while Gareth Gates also took it to number one when Simon Cowell got his hands on it. I’ve chosen the Robson & Jerome version which Cowell also took to the top: two chiselled actors who could sing were given an unruinable song, updated for 1995 production values. Cowell, like Herb Alpert and Clive Davis, knew what key ‘money’ was in.
Hence why he gave Susan Boyle Wild Horses to sing when he discovered her on Britain’s Got Talent. A country-rock ballad written by the Rolling Stones which had been influenced by a rich guy called Gram Parsons, Susan’s version has lashings of strings and high notes which spotlight her voice. I am sure Mick and Keith, who put the song out in their golden period in the early 1970s, didn’t mind the royalties.
The songwriting teams working in Manhattan all made MOR, according to Sean Ross, be they Bacharach & David, Goffin & King, Mann & Weil, Barry & Greenwich or Jim Webb. Wichita Lineman is a fascinating song which departs from the tonic key immediately after stating it: the song never returns to an F major chord after the intro, as Glen Campbell takes the role of the lineman who needs ‘a small vacation’ and who utters the famous yearning line: ‘And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time’.
Phil Spector’s work, including on The Long and Winding Road, counts as MOR too. Paul McCartney gained a reputation for being the ‘safe Beatle’ and spiritual-leaning songs like this and Let It Be support this. Although I reckon most MOR songs shy away from politics, there is no doubt that when listening to John Lennon’s song Imagine it has a gentle production and a piano-led melody. It’s hardly Revolution 9, is it?
Drummer Karen and her brother Richard Carpenter were the king and queen of MOR at that time. This was the era where baby boomers were raising kids and needed to settle down. Carole King’s domestic take on love, her album Tapestry, remains a watermark in singer/songwriting. Having cut her teeth churning out teenypop anthems in the 60s, her life formed the basis of plenty of MOR tunes including So Far Away and It’s Too Late.
Paul Williams, meanwhile, wrote We’ve Only Just Begun which first found life in a TV commercial for a bank. The polished harmonies and languid melody make it a perfect backdrop to married couples who ‘started walking and learn to run’. The sound of the recorded version makes it a perfect segue from or into a Tapestry tune.
Of all the Barry Manilow tunes I could pick – the one about Mandy, the one about Lola who was a showgirl at the Copacabana – I think I Wanna Do It With You is by far the blandest. Manilow really wants to do it with you on I Wanna Do It With You, which might even be turned down by a country act for being too chaste.
On the topic of country, I always find that certain Garth Brooks songs are MOR songs in country clothing. If Tomorrow Never Comes, for instance, is a plea to ‘tell that someone that you love just what you’re thinking of’ delivered by a guy from Oklahoma. If he was from Orange Country, he’d get on pop radio. George Strait ballads like The Chair, in which our hero constructs a story to get a dance from a lady, are given a clear arrangement which foregrounds the vocal. Not for nothing was George marketed as the Urban Cowboy.
John Denver’s country career included the anthemic Take Me Home Country Roads and many lesser tracks but, for some reason linked to its MOR status, Annie’s Song lights up people’s senses 50 years after it was written. It’s an unabashed love song where John compares Annie’s effect to storms, mountains and oceans while wishing to ‘die in your arms’.
Before she got physical, Olivia Newton-John was also pushed to country music audiences, possibly because pop music already had Barbra and Diana. John Farrar, Olivia’s collaborator, knew what people wanted in songs which would showcase the personality of its singer. Hopelessly Devoted To You featured in Grease as a song for her character Sandy to sing of her heartbreak and foolishness over a 12/8 shuffle.
Kenny Rogers, don’t forget, had his biggest hit with a song about a Gambler whose advice was to ‘know when to hold ‘em’. I pick this ahead of Islands in the Stream (written by the Bee Gees) because the message is universal. Don Schlitz hopefully never had to work again after giving Kenny that one to sing.
Kenny also sang the Lionel Richie-composed Lady and that’s a good segue into the genre which was marketed as Quiet Storm, which is Black Adult Contemporary. Sean Ross notes the ‘Supper club music’ which was made by acts who had earned their chops by singing easy tunes from the 1950s. Diana Ross and the Supremes, for instance, whose career was masterminded by one of those men I mentioned at the top of this show, Berry Gordy.
Black Adult Contemporary was nicknamed Quiet Storm after a Smokey Robinson song. Having made his name as a Motown hitmaker, Smokey glided into middle age with songs like Cruisin’ and Being With You, which sounded like baby boomers settling down into their sofas.
The great American voices like Al Green (Let’s Stay Together), Roberta Flack (Killing Me Softly with his Song, the fluttering smash hit inspired by Don McLean ‘strumming my pain’), Chaka Khan (Through The Fire), Rose Royce (Wishing on a Star, which has one of the best bridges in pop music), Earth Wind & Fire (After The Love Has Gone), Billy Preston & Syreeta (With You I’m Born Again), Patti Austin & James Ingram (Baby Come To Me), and Anita Baker (Sweet Love) are all MOR, as is the song Lovely Day by Bill Withers, which was so mainstream that when I was growing up it was synched to an ad for Tetley’s tea. What can be more MOR than a cup of tea?
Toto were so successful they once won the Album of the Year Grammy. Less well known to those who sing along to Africa is their work on Thriller, the multi-diamond album from Michael Jackson. Cutting the edges off his black sound, this was calculated to cross over to a white audience who lapped up the African influence on Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, the rock guitar of Eddie van Halen on Beat It and the funk bounce of PYT. Human Nature is a high-end Quincy Jones production in what is essentially Michael backed by Toto. The song means very little – Jacko spends town in New York (‘if this town is just an apple’) and is seduced by its people (‘see that girl, she knows I’m watching’) – but his vocal leaps are as alluring as he finds the city. It’s MOR in excelsis.
Petula Clark did something similar on her song Downtown, a song fizzing with optimism where ‘you can forget all your troubles’ in the city, where you can watch a movie or hop into a club with a bossa nova band.
Then there’s Barbra Streisand who, like Frank Sinatra, is one of the key studio vocalists in pop music, having retired from the stage for several years due to stage fright. A host of hit movies (Funny Girl, A Star Is Born) made her a bankable star and a hitmaker supreme. Teaming up with Barry Gibb, she released the album Guilty in 1980 on which Barry replaced the 4/4 disco stomp with what is now known as Yacht Rock (more on which next week in the second 45 show). I don’t know whether to pick the album’s title track or the first single Woman In Love, where Barbra coos the verse as if floating on air.
Record shops today still have a section called Easy Listening which houses all the stars of the pre-rock era as well as cosy singers like Val Doonican and Tony Bennett. Really MOR is a production genre rather than anything to do with lyrical content or melodic heft, as we shall discover with some modern examples of MOR. There is certainly nothing political about MOR, other than the politics of making as much money as possible out of melody.
When I was 16, I started listening to Radio 2 in the evenings, which meant I would Wake Up To Wogan. Terry Wogan was the UK’s most popular breakfast DJ, helping to set the mood for the day with whimsy and soft, slow music. Eva Cassidy sold millions of albums after her death thanks to Terry’s support of her interpretations of Over The Rainbow and Fields of Gold. I would suggest her take is the definitive version and I am sure Sting was grateful for the royalties.
Wogan was also a fan of Mike Batt’s protégé Katie Melua, a Georgia-born singer whose gentle voice was perfect for a Radio 2 audience. The Closest Thing To Crazy was gossamer-thin but was arranged immaculately by the man who made the Wombles rock; it’s a song about how love makes Katie crazy.
Another supporter of MOR acts was Michael Parkinson, who welcomed Michael Buble onto his show several times. In fact, just last month Buble plugged his new album on Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. Buble is the king of what Sean Ross calls ‘Retro Martini’, a modern concoction that recalls the old Sinatra and Martin records. Buble co-wrote his song Home, which was also a hit for Blake Shelton. He wants to go home to his beloved because he feels all alone in ‘Paris and Rome’ and he’s ‘living someone else’s life’.
When Mum was filling up the car and Magic FM was playing James Blunt’s song You’re Beautiful (written on Carrie Fisher’s piano, by the way), I knew that resistance was futile. Once Magic gets hold of a song, as they did with Home, they hammer it to death and play it on the hour every hour. A song Blunt has called the high point of his Greatest Hit set (‘hit’ singular), it’s a gentle song about catching the eye of ‘an angel’ on a subway and sharing ‘a moment that will last till the end’. There’s no plot development because Blunt realises he’ll never steal this angel from another man. It doesn’t mean people won’t stop trying.
What else does everyone do from time to time apart from fantasise about having another man’s woman? They have a bad day. Daniel Powter came from nowhere with his piano singing about passions going away and blue skies going grey and the chorus of Bad Day was everywhere for a year, on the hour every hour.
There are now acts primed for a Radio 2 market, such as Celeste or Emeli Sande. She ruled 2012 with Next To Me, another song about how much she loves her beau delivered in tremulous verses and wide-open choruses. Gregory Porter is another Radio 2 lifer, with a voice that recalls Donnie Hathaway; I particularly love his MOR song Hey Laura, where he spends three minutes apologising for showing up to convince her to love him. Is he a schmuck, ‘a fool’, or is he fuelled by the fire of love? The lyric is ambiguous: ‘go ahead and lie to me and make me believe’. Even without his headgear, Gregory is an act worth paying attention to, and he also seems like a nice fella.
Earlier I mentioned Susan Boyle covering the Rolling Stones. In the last decade, John Lewis has commissioned versions of old songs to soundtrack their Christmas commercials. One year, pianist Tom Odell took on a John Lennon demo which was turned into the Beatles song Real Love. Tom grew up playing piano in pubs before he was given a major-label deal and is headlining the British Country Music Festival in Blackpool this September. If country is about storytelling, Tom is a country artist.
I bet you were waiting for me to mention the maestro of the middle of the road. Ed Sheeran’s entire career makes him look like a music executive with a loop pedal and a band t-shirt. Performing solo stadium shows, Ed has made a killing in the last decade and knows exactly what people want to hear. His second album, Multiply, was particularly packed with hits for the age of the algorithm but it was Thinking Out Loud that took off.
A love song about ‘loving you till we’re 70’, it opens up into a fine chorus where Ed wants to be kissed ‘under the light of a thousand stars’. He’ll be doomed to rewrite this song for the next 50 years, just as his good friend Elton John has been living under the shadow of Your Song since he wrote the melody as a young performer. Elton wasn’t even surprised when ITV viewers voted it their favourite Elton John song in 2017. Candle In The Wind was at 2 and Rocket Man was at 3; all three are MOR tunes with piano-led melodies and introspective lyrics. Rocket Man is basically Wichita Lineman In Space.
As adored as Elton, George Michael caught the MOR bug as he was leaving Wham when he recorded the lushly arranged Careless Whisper, a sort of final conversation with a lover through dancing, hence his ‘guilty feet’. There were plenty more MOR tunes on his Best Of – a version of Stevie Wonder’s As with Mary J Blige, the deathly slow, echo-laden pair Praying For Time and Jesus To A Child – but Careless Whisper was often voted the number one song in Capital Radio’s Hall of Fame, an annual public vote for the best pop song where people voted as much for George as for the song.
The outpouring of grief on Christmas Day 2016 when George’s death was announced shows how much he connected with the public. I reckon Paul McCartney, who is 80 in June, will have similar love thrown to him because he wrote songs which had empathy with the listener. He may have been lampooned as Fab Macca Wacky Thumbs Aloft by Smash Hits magazine, but Mull of Kintyre sold 2m copies.
So, summing up, what does it take to write an MOR song? Strings or piano help, some sort of deep emotion like love or closeness, a good structure, harmonies, a solid narrative voice but a vague and universal lyric. You can hear what I’ve come up with, a song called MOR Each Day, at the dedicated 45 playlist on the Soundcloud account.
Here’s the MOR playlist in one place for your delectation.
Next time: Yacht Rock