Wiktionary
a. 1 (context idiomatic English) Having a centrist attitude or philosophy; not extreme, especially politically. 2 (context music English) Of a type of melodic popular music that has wide appeal. alt. 1 (context idiomatic English) Having a centrist attitude or philosophy; not extreme, especially politically. 2 (context music English) Of a type of melodic popular music that has wide appeal.
Wikipedia
Middle of the road (MOR) music is a commercial radio format which encompasses several styles. MOR music is broadly popular music; generally, it is strongly melodic and often features vocal harmony technique and orchestral arrangements. During the 1960s and the 1970s, the beautiful music radio stations were considered MOR radio, while its contemporary analogues are the smooth jazz and the adult contemporary radio formats.
Middle of the Road is a Scottish pop group who enjoyed success across Europe and Latin America in the early 1970s. Four of their singles sold over one million copies each, and received a gold disc. The tracks were " Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" (which went on to sell over 10 million), "Sacramento", "Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum" and "Soley Soley". By early 1972 the group had sold over five million records.
"Middle of the Road" is a single that appears on The Pretenders' album Learning to Crawl.
It is a song that has a 60s-style rhythm, and it peaked at #19 on the US pop singles chart and #2 on the US mainstream rock chart in January 1984, where it stayed for four weeks.
Hynde has stated that "Middle of the Road" refers to Tao Te Ching, which she interprets as "the middle way." According to Charles M. Young of Musician, the song is about "getting out there and mixing it up with the world." The song lyrics are semi-autobiographical, including observations about the difference between wealth and poverty singer-songwriter Chrissie Hynde had observed, but mostly about changes in herself: I got a kid, I'm thirty-three, baby! (In reality, Hynde turned 32 shortly before the single was released). Hynde plays the harmonica solo near the end of the song.
"Middle of the Road" uses a 4/4 time signature. Hynde has acknowledged that "Middle of the Road" uses the same chords as the Rolling Stones' song "Empty Heart" and that it doesn't have much melody. She says that it uses basic chords and that it is like "a regular R&B song," going on to say that "it's like taking a basic format, like the blues, and just giving it new lyrics." She describes Robbie McIntosh's guitar solo as "nifty." Audio Magazine compared the song's structure to that of Dobie Gray's " The 'In' Crowd."
Allmusic critic Liana Jonas calls "Middle of the Road" a "classic example of pure, unadulterated rock music." She ascribes this to the fact that the lyrics focus on people's innate desire to "get up and go" and the "driven" music backs up the sentiment. Fellow Allmusic critic Mark Deming calls it a "furious rocker."
In 1989 the song was donated to a double album for Greenpeace along with other songs that had environmental or other earth-sensitive subjects titled "Greenpeace: Rainbow Warriors."
Usage examples of "middle of the road".
A gout of arterial blood spread across the middle of the road and made islands of the empty cartridge cases.
With the patrol sitting motionless in the middle of the road, it occurred to Kethol that he would have objected to Lady Mondegreen accompanying them, if he'd thought anybody would have listened to him.
One of them, a stubble-faced man in a patched cloak and rusty breastplate, indolently rose, stepped into the middle of the road, and held up one beefy hand.
Niggen was standing in the middle of the road with the torn fabric in his hand, giggling.
They stopped in the middle of the road, as they always did since entering the forest.
Remnants of netting or fencing or whatever still clung to the bare cliffs above the highway, but the going was far slower than it had to be, because you never knew when you'd have to swerve around a boulder sitting in the middle of the road that nobody had gotten around to moving yet.
The child carrying it rushes purposefully across the narrow front yard and stops in the middle of the road, directly in my path.
There was a blackened body hanging out of the one they had unloaded from and another was in sight in the middle of the road.
Enchanted, he stopped the car right in the middle of the road and watched those three arcs of color shimmer against the fragile blue canvas of the sky.