Raised on Radio: Power Ballads, Cocaine & Payola – the AOR Glory Years 1976-1986

Paul Rees’s Raised on Radio is, remarkably, the first biography of AOR (“Album-Oriented Rock”), critically derided at the time but massively popular during its 1976–1986 heyday when artists such as Journey, Boston, Foreigner, Toto, REO Speedwagon, Heart, Pat Benatar, Bryan Adams, and Styx sold many millions of albums and toured stadiums. Today, those very same songs are streaming in record numbers and many of the artists continue to play to sellout audiences around the world. They may have been dismissed at the time as terminally uncool by elitist rock critics in thrall to punk and new wave, but their music was, and is still, the soundtrack to so many people’s lives.

For better or worse, AOR’s prime movers lived life in the fast lane. Cocaine use was rampant, egos were unchecked, and intra-band fighting became par for the course. What’s more, their influence stretches across generations and through the fabric of popular American music. AOR invented the power ballad, and the sound of it has traveled on through hair metal, pop rock, and right up to Taylor Swift.

Raised on Radio is a stadium-sized, massively entertaining oral and pop-cultural history in the bestselling tradition of Meet Me in the Bathroom, Nothin’ But a Good Time, and Please Kill Me, capturing a time and place that was as big, booming, and unabashed as the music that provided its soundtrack.