Adult contemporary music
Adult contemporary music, frequently abbreviated
AC, is a type of
radio format that plays mainstream contemporary
pop music, excluding
hip hop and hard rock (mainly since it is geared more toward adults than teens, despite the fact that most singers are adults, yet perform music for all ages.). AC is generally divided into 3 groups; "
Hot AC", also known as "
Adult Top 40", "
Soft AC", also known as "Lite", and "Urban AC," also known as "Urban Contemporary". Some
radio stations play only Hot AC; some play only Soft AC, and some play both. It is not thus usually considered a specific genre of music, as it is merely an assembly of selected tracks of musicians of many different genres.
Adult Top 40 was an
American radio format which was reminiscent of pre-
1995 Top 40 radio before
rap music became a staple on
playlists. Adult Top 40 radio was created to appeal to a demographic that liked
pop music without the rap. Softer rock bands with melodic hooks and singer/songwriters thrive on adult top 40 radio. Artists played ranged from
matchbox twenty to
Sheryl Crow to
Madonna. It evolved into what is now called Hot Adult Contemporary or
Hot AC.Today, Hot AC radio stations tend towards slightly harder rock music, such as
Lenny Kravitz and
Aerosmith, and may occasionally play dance hits, such as those by
Paula Abdul,
Kylie Minogue, and
Nina Sky.
Madonna's more upbeat songs "Music" and "Ray Of Light" were big hits on Hot AC, but were not played on Soft AC stations, which are more likely to play her songs "I'll Remember", "Crazy For You", or "Power Of Goodbye". Hot AC is slightly more
alternative than Soft AC—
Howie Day's "Collide" is a considerable Hot AC hit but is not played on Soft AC radio stations. All five of the singles from
Alanis Morissette's
Jagged Little Pill are also staples of this format.
Some Hot AC stations have begun adding
rap/hip hop music to their playlists to compete with
Top 40 stations, but play less rap/hip hop than their top 40 counterparts.
Hot AC radio stations frequently carry the "Mix" moniker. The "Mix" moniker was pioneered by the
Houston radio station Mix 96.5. "Star" is another popular nickname.
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. 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 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 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. 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) and "Kiss" (borrowed from
Top-40).
A more elaborate form of Urban AC is the
Rhythmic Oldies format, which focuses primarily on R&B/Soul hits from the
1960s to the
1990s.
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 only playing certain genres of music, and generally following the evolution of artists in those genres. One big impetus for the evolution of the AC radio format was the popularity of easy listening stations, stations with music specifically designed to be purely
ambient, listened to while at work or otherwise in the background. Whereas most easy listening music was created by relatively unknown artists and rarely purchased, AC was an attempt to create a similar "lite" format by choosing certain tracks 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 1950s songs in its rotation).
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
1980's. For similar reasons as explained above with radio, in the mid
1990's, 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.
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) 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
techno 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" is 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. Although, 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, "Wherever You Will Go" by
The Calling, "My Immortal" by
Evanescence, 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.
Also in response to the pressure on Hot AC, a third kind of AC format has cropped up among American radio recently.
Urban Adult Contemporary (coined by
Barry Mayo) is an AC format that usually attracts a large number of
African Americans and sometimes
Caucasian listeners. This format plays a great deal of
R&B (without any form of rapping),
Gospel music, Classic Soul and
Dance music. 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
New Mix 102.7 is a popular example of this evolving format, which is sometimes called "Classic Dance" instead. Currently, New York's
WLTW uses the AC format.
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. 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, 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.
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 artists (such as
Nat King Cole,
Bing Crosby,
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.
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Adult Top 40 Hits Discussion*
MajikRadio.com Online Adult Contemporary radio station featuring the most popular soft rock, easy pop, love songs and motown hits from the past four decades.
