(Redirected from Adult Contemporary)'Adult contemporary music', frequently abbreviated 'AC', is a type of
radio format that plays mainstream contemporary
pop music, excluding
hip hop,
hard rock, and some
teen pop music, which is intended for a mature adult audience, especially for people who are 16 and older. AC is generally divided into 4 groups; "Hot AC", also known as "
Adult Top 40", "Soft AC", also known as "Lite", and "Urban AC", also known as "Urban Contemporary", and "Christian AC", (family friendly and spiritual songs). Some
radio stations play only Hot AC; some play only Soft AC, and some play both. Thus it is not usually considered a specific genre of music, since it is merely an assembly of selected tracks of musicians of many different genres.
Hot Adult Contemporary
Hot Adult Contemporary was introduced in
1986 as a hybrid of
Top 40 and
oldies-based Adult Contemporary. The format was designed to appeal to adults who liked pop music but also liked more era variety than Top 40 offered. The first Hot AC station was
WWMX (Mix 106.5 - "Baltimore's Best Mix of the 60's, 70's and 80's"). New songs with sufficient adult appeal that weren't too soft were mixed with popular
oldies that weren't too old. By the early
1990s "Mix" stations appeared in most markets in the US.
Today, Hot AC radio stations tend towards slightly harder
rock music, such as
Lenny Kravitz,
Bon Jovi and
Aerosmith, and may occasionally play
Dance Hits, such as those by
Paula Abdul,
Kylie Minogue,
Rihanna, and some of
Madonna's more upbeat, dance-oriented songs, such as "Music" and "Ray Of Light." Hot AC is also slightly more
alternative than Soft AC; examples of alternative or harder-edged artists played on Hot AC but unlikely to be heard on Soft AC stations include
Red Hot Chili Peppers,
All-American Rejects,
Linkin Park,
Third Eye Blind,
Fall Out Boy, and
P!nk. However, the line between Hot AC and Soft AC continues to blur, as alternative and rock artists such as
Lifehouse ("You and Me"),
Nickelback ("Far Away"),
Avril Lavigne ("Complicated," "I'm With You"),
3 Doors Down ("Here Without You"),
The Fray ("How to Save a Life"), and
Hinder ("Lips of An Angel"), have all released singles which got substantial Soft AC airplay.
Some Hot AC stations have begun adding
rap/hip hop music to their playlists, from such artists as
Akon and
Black Eyed Peas, to compete with
Top 40 stations, but play less rap/hip hop than their
Top 40 counterparts.
Hot AC is less successful in the
United States, but in
Canada, it is the most-listened-to radio format. Some top 40-leaning hot ACs, such as
CHUM-FM in
Toronto and
CJFM-FM in
Montreal are some of the most successful hot AC stations.
Soft Adult Contemporary
'Soft AC' is also known as "lite" music, and many radio stations across North America that play Soft AC refer to themselves as "lite" stations.
CHFI is a good example. Other popular nicknames include "Magic", "Warm", "Sunny", and "
EZ Rock". The format can be seen as a more contemporary successor to the
Middle of the road (MOR),
Beautiful Music or
Easy Listening formats. The latter two were once common on FM radio. Sometimes, the margins blur between this genre and
soft rock. And a few "lite" stations, such as
WLTW-FM in
New York City,
WSB-FM and
WLTM in
Atlanta,
WYJB-FM in
Albany, New York, and
WJJY-FM in
Brainerd, Minnesota have actually started to mix in more "Hot AC" songs into their playlist as well.
Urban Adult Contemporary
'Urban AC' is a form of AC music that is geared towards adult
African-American audiences, and therefore, the artists that are played on these stations are most often African-American. The Urban AC stations are more similar to Soft AC than they are to Hot AC, and the music they play is predominantly
R&B and
soul music with little
hip-hop. This is reflected in many of the Urban AC radio stations'
taglines, such as "Today's R&B and Classic Soul", "The Best Variety of R&B Hits and Oldies" and "(City/Region)'s R&B Leader." Some popular nicknames for Urban AC stations include "Magic" (borrowed from Soft AC), "Mix" (borrowed from Hot AC), and "Kiss" (borrowed from
Top-40). Among Urban AC's core artists include
Luther Vandross,
Patti LaBelle,
Mariah Carey,
Kem,
Whitney Houston,
Robin Thicke,
Sade,
Aretha Franklin,
Michael Jackson,
Brian McKnight,
Teena Marie,
Mary J. Blige, and
Gerald Levert.
A slightly hotter variation of the ''Urban AC'' is the 'Rhythmic Adult Contemporary' format, often branded as
MOViN. This focuses on uptempo hits such as disco, early hip-hop and R&B, and dance music, and it caters to both African-American and white audiences. Noteworthy examples of Rhythmic AC stations include
WKTU in New York,
KMVN in Los Angeles,
WISX in Philadelphia, and
KQMV in Seattle (which pioneered the MOViN format).
A more elaborate form of Urban AC is the '
Rhythmic Oldies' format, which focuses primarily on "Old School" R&B/Soul hits from the 1960s to the 1990s, including
Motown and
disco hits. At its peak of nationwide popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the format was often referred to as "Jammin'" or "Groovin'" Oldies. The concept of "Jammin' Oldies" was pioneered in
1997 by
KCMG-FM "Mega 100" in
Los Angeles (
1). The format, which included white soul or disco artists such as
ABBA and the
Bee Gees in addition to Black artists, subsequently spread to many major markets, but has since cooled down; the decline of "Jammin' Oldies" popularity is often attributed to overly tight playlists which increased listener "burnout." Rhythmic Oldies stations still exist today, but usually more specifically target African-Americans as opposed to a mass audience; examples include
WDMK-FM in Detroit and
WWWS-AM in Buffalo, NY.
Usually embedded within the Urban Adult Contemporary is another format called
Quiet Storm. This format is most played during the evening beginning at 7:00 PM or 8:00 PM hours into late night. The Quiet Storm format plays on Urban Adult Contemporary format and is a sort of mix between the Urban AC and Soft AC styles of music. The music that is played are strictly ballads and slow jams, mostly but not limited to Black and Latino artists. Popular artists played on the
Quiet Storm format are
Teena Marie,
Mariah Carey,
Angela Bofill,
Miki Howard,
Regina Belle,
Howard Hewitt,
Freddie Jackson,
Johnny Gill,
Anita Baker,
Sade,
Patti LaBelle,
Lalah Hathaway,
Vanessa Williams,
Dru Hill, and
En Vogue among others.
"New adult contemporary"
Main articles: Smooth jazz
The
smooth jazz genre is often referred to as 'new adult contemporary' or 'NAC'.
History and Evolution of the Format
Early radio stations played top-40 hits, theoretically regardless of genre although most were in the same genre until the mid-1970s when different forms of popular music started to target different demographic groups, such as
disco vs.
hard rock. This evolved into specialized radio stations which played specific genres of music, and generally following the evolution of artists in those genres.
One big impetus for the development of the AC radio format was the fact that when rock and roll music first became popular in the mid-1950s, many more conservative radio stations wanted to continue to play current hit songs while shying away from rock. These stations also frequently included older, pre-rock-era
adult standards and
big band titles to further appeal to adult listeners who had grown up with those songs. In those days,
Middle of the Road or "MOR" was the formatic term used to describe such stations, which included powerhouse broadcasters like
WJR in Detroit,
WGN and
WBBM in Chicago,
KGO in San Francisco,
WNEW-AM in New York, and
KMOX in St. Louis.
Billboard magazine first published an
adult-contemporary music chart in
1961, although it was not until
1979 that the chart took on the name "Adult Contemporary."
While most popular MOR stations were, like Top 40 stations of the day, on the AM dial, another big impetus for the evolution of the AC radio format was the popularity of easy listening or "
beautiful music" stations, stations with music specifically designed to be purely
ambient, listened to while at work or otherwise in the background. These stations were largely found on the FM dial alongside
classical music stations because the music they played sounded better on FM. Whereas most easy listening music was instrumental, created by relatively unknown artists (except for occasional MOR vocal hits), and rarely purchased, AC was an attempt to create a similar "lite" format by choosing certain tracks (both hit singles and album cuts) of popular artists.
The growth of AC was also a natural result of the generation that first listened to the more "specialized" music of the mid-late 70s growing older and not being interested in the heavy metal, rap and hip-hop music that a new generation helped to dominate the top-40 charts (this effect has also altered the
Oldies format; as there are now two kinds of Oldies stations, those who will not play songs from after the early 1970s vs. those who will play songs up to the early 1980s while still having occasional pre-1964 songs in rotation). Fans of harder rock music often derogatorily referred to AC stations in the early days of the format as "chicken rock."
The music video channel
VH1 began as an AC version of
MTV. Originally, it was strictly Soft AC, as it strove to appeal to people who were in their 30s and 40s during its early years in the mid
1980s. For similar reasons as explained above with radio, in the mid
1990s, it reformed itself as something closer to Hot AC, during which time it began to play videos by
Hootie & The Blowfish, the
Gin Blossoms,
Alanis Morissette,
Melissa Etheridge, the
Spin Doctors,
Amy Grant,
Ace of Base, and some other artists that were slightly harder rock or more avant garde than they had previously played.
Mainstream AC itself has evolved in a similar fashion over the years; traditional AC artists like
Barbra Streisand, the
Carpenters,
Barry Manilow,
Captain & Tennille and
Olivia Newton-John found it harder to have hits (on AC as well as Top 40) as the 1980s wore on, and due to the influence of MTV, artists who were staples of the
Contemporary Hit Radio format, such as
Madonna,
Culture Club,
Cyndi Lauper,
Tears for Fears, and
Whitney Houston, began crossing over to the AC charts with greater frequency.
However, with the combination of MTV and AC radio, Adult Contemporary appeard harder to define as either, established soft-rock artist of the past (who were still charting pop hits), or the mainstream radio fare from newer artist at the time, such as Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and Whitney Houston. In 1989,
Linda Ronstadt recorded ''
Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind'', described by critics as the first true Adult Contemporary album and featuring American soul singer
Aaron Neville on four of the twelve tracks. It had duets including "Don't Know Much" (Billboard Hot 100 chart No. 2 hit) and "All My Life" (Billboard Hot 100 chart No. 11 hit), these singles were also equally long-running No. 1 Adult Contemporary hits. With the mixture of radio friendly AC tunes with some rock and pop fare also landing on the pop charts, the album won over many crtics in need to define AC, and appeared to change the tolerance and acceptance of AC music into mainstream day to day radio play.
In recent years, VH1 has moved away from its AC format by becoming willing to play artists such as
Britney Spears,
Destiny's Child,
Eminem,
Jay-Z, and
Snoop Dogg, all usually AC no-no's, more and more often. With this addition of popular hip-hop, rap, and R&B, VH1 (when it plays videos, which, to be sure, is on very rare occasions now) most closely resembles
Top 40 radio now. Led by
Toronto powerhouse
CHUM-FM,
Canadian Hot AC radio has also taken steps towards a similarly more diverse and
Top 40-inclusive musical position.
Part of the reason why more and more Hot AC stations are forced to change is that less and less new music fits their bill. Most new rock is too alternative for mainstream radio, including Hot AC, and only gets played on
Modern Rock radio; and most new pop is now influenced heavily by
eurodance or
hip hop, in an attempt to become
club and
rhythmic crossover hits, if not featuring guest vocals from rappers. One example is that "
Look What You've Done" by
Jet is played on Hot AC stations, but other tracks like "
Cold Hard Bitch" are played on modern rock stations. Soft AC, however, which has never minded keeping songs in high rotation literally for years in some cases, and plays a larger amount of older music, especially classic R&B,
soul, and '60s and '70s music, than Hot AC, does not appear necessarily to be facing similar pressures to expand its format.
However, more and more recently, several Soft AC stations have begun to add more guitar-driven (but still relatively quiet) music into their playlists, such as "Broken" by
Seether, "You And Me" by
Lifehouse, "Here Without You" by
3 Doors Down, "Complicated" and "I'm With You" by
Avril Lavigne, "Wherever You Will Go" by
The Calling, "My Immortal" by
Evanescence, "Home" and "It's Not Over" by
Daughtry and "I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" by
Aerosmith, somewhat resembling the Hot AC stations of the 1990s.
In this sense, the Soft AC format may soon be facing the demographic pressures that the
Jazz format faced in the 1960s and 1970s, the "
Big Band" format faced in the 1980s and 1990s and that the
Oldies format is starting to face today, with the result that one may see Soft AC less on over-the-air radio and more on
satellite radio systems in coming years. Much of the music and artists that was traditionally played on Soft AC stations has been relegated to the
Adult Standards format, which is itself disappearing because of aging demographics. Some Soft AC stations have found a niche by incorporating more oldies into their playlists and are more open to playing softer songs that fit the "traditional" definition of AC. Examples include
WLTM-FM in Atlanta (which added many oldies titles to its playlist after the death of oldies sister station
WLCL) and the former
WSNI in Philadelphia with soft rock station
WBEB.
In the meantime, such artists as
Nick Lachey and
Josh Groban have become successful thanks to a ballad heavy sound. So, Adult Contemporary may likely not go anywhere since it is still prevalent on recording artists albums in almost every music style including
dance music. Another popular trend of remixing
dance music hits into Adult Contemporary ballads, mostly piano ballads but sometimes keyboard ballads is now all the rage, especially in the U.S. (for example, the "Candlelight Mix" versions of "Heaven" by
DJ Sammy, "Listen To Your Heart" by
D.H.T., and "Everytime We Touch" by
Cascada).
Also in response to the pressure on Hot AC, a third kind of AC format has cropped up among American radio recently. The aforementioned
Urban Adult Contemporary format (a term coined by
Barry Mayo) usually attracts a large number of
African Americans and sometimes
Caucasian listeners through playing a great deal of
R&B (without any form of rapping),
Gospel music, Classic Soul and
Dance music (including
disco).
A fourth AC format, "Rhythmic AC", in addition to playing all the popular Hot and Soft AC music, past and present, places a heavy emphasis on
disco as well as 1980s and
'90s dance hits, such as those by
Amber,
C&C Music Factory and
Black Box, and includes dance
remixes of pop songs, such as the
Soul Solution Mix of
Toni Braxton's "Unbreak My Heart". The format also occasionally features popular '80s and early '90s rap songs that were popular mainstream, rhythmic, or club hits.
New York City's
WKTU and the now-defunct
WNEW-FM are examples of this evolving format. The rapidly growing
MOViN format, pioneered at
Seattle's
KQMV and now in use at stations such as
KMVN Los Angeles,
WMVN St. Louis, and
KFRC San Francisco, is another example of Rhythmic AC, and has spawned imitators such as
WISX in Philadelphia.
In its early years of existence, the
Smooth Jazz format was considered to be a form of AC, although it was mainly instrumental, and bore a stronger resemblance to the Soft AC-styled music than it did to what purists call "real jazz." For many years, artists like
George Benson,
Kenny G and
Dave Koz had crossover hits that were played on both Smooth Jazz and Soft AC stations. In addition,
David Sanborn had a saxophone solo on
James Taylor's remake of the
Marvin Gaye classic, "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)"; and
Grover Washington Jr. teamed up with
Bill Withers to perform a classic hit song, entitled "Just The Two Of Us." This song has gone on to become one of the most-played radio hits of all time, as it frequently shows up on Soft AC, Urban AC and Smooth Jazz playlists.
Anita Baker,
Sade and
Luther Vandross are other examples of artists who appeal to Mainstream AC, Urban AC and Smooth Jazz listeners. Some Soft AC and Urban AC stations like to play Smooth Jazz on the weekends, in cities that currently do not have a full-time Smooth Jazz station.
Warm 98 in
Cincinnati, Ohio,
Majic 95.5 in
Austin, Texas,
WCSY-FM in
South Haven, Michigan,
WMAG in
Greensboro, North Carolina, and
Soft Rock 101.9 in
San Antonio, Texas are Soft AC stations that also play Smooth Jazz; and
V101.9, an Urban AC station in
Charlotte, North Carolina, plays Smooth Jazz on the weekends as well. (However, a new Smooth Jazz station now serves the Cincinnati area, under the call letters
WCIN-AM.)
In recent years it has become common for many AC stations (and Soft AC stations in particular) to switch to a format playing primarily or exclusively
Christmas songs during November and December. While these tend mostly to be contemporary seasonal recordings by the same artists featured under the normal format, stations will also typically air vintage holiday tunes from older
Adult Standards artists (such as
Nat King Cole,
Bing Crosby,
Carpenters,
Johnny Mathis and
Andy Williams) who they would never play under ordinary circumstances. These Christmas music marathons typically start on
Thanksgiving Day (although some stations may start playing Christmas music well before the Thanksgiving weekend) and end at midnight on
Christmas Day, after which the stations resume their normal music fare on
December 26. The roots of this tradition can be traced all the way back to the
Beautiful Music era of the 1960s and
'70s. However, this practice seems to have become even more common among mainstream AC stations since the events of
September 11, 2001, with many stations promoting their Christmas music marathons as a sort of musical
comfort food.
Some Adult Contemporary core artists
This list includes the most played artists in the
United States, starting with the most played, in the Adult Contemporary format from January 2006 through October 2006
[1].
Some Hot AC core artists
This list includes the most played artists in the
United States, starting with the most played, in the Hot AC format from January 2006 through October 2006
[2]. If an artist does not have at least four hit songs, it is designated by "++" and should not necessarily be considered a core artist.
Syndicated radio shows and networks carrying the AC format
★
Delilah - One of America's most popular radio shows, ''Delilah'' airs primarily in the evening.
★
John Tesh Radio Show - Hosted by
John Tesh, this show also airs evenings and also on weekends.
★ Your Weekend with
Jim Brickman - A weekly three-hour weekend radio show syndicated by
WestStar TalkRadio Network.
★ American Top 10/Top 20 with
Casey Kasem - The nation's premiere AC countdown programs. AT10 focuses on the Soft AC format, and AT20 the Hot AC.
★
American Top 40 with
Ryan Seacrest - One version of AT40 airs on Hot AC stations, which is a little different from its Top-40/CHR counterpart.
★
Backtrax USA with Kid Kelly - Weekend programs focusing on the
80s and
90s, targeted for Hot AC stations.
★ Absolutely 80s with
Nina Blackwood - Another 80s program.
★ The Amazing 80s with
M. G. Kelly - Another 80s program.
★
ABC and
Jones Radio both offer AC 24-hour networks programming Soft and Hot AC.
Westwood One/
Dial Global recently replaced its Soft AC format with the Rhythmic AC format "Rhythm Mix", though it also offers a Hot AC format called "Bright AC."
★
Tom Joyner and
Steve Harvey have popular morning shows that air on Urban AC (and sometimes Hip-Hop) stations. Both shows are often heard on competing stations in the same city, such as
St. Louis,
Philadelphia and
Atlanta. Joyner's show is syndicated by
Radio One, and Harvey's show by
Premiere Radio Networks.
Charts
★
R&R AC Chart
★
R&R Hot AC Chart
★
R&R Urban AC Chart
See also
★
Stream 24 An internet-only modern adult contemporary station featuring tracks from many AC artists listed above.
★
MajikRadio.com Online music station featuring soft rock, lite pop, classic oldies, motown and love songs from the sixties through today.
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