Adult contemporary music in the context of "Gordon Lightfoot"

Contemporary hit radio (CHR, also known as contemporary hits, hit list, current hits, hit music, top 40, or pop radio) is a radio format common in many countries that focuses on playing current and recurrent popular music as determined by the Top 40 music charts. There are several subcategories, dominantly focusing on rock, pop, or urban music. Used alone, CHR most often refers to the CHR-pop format. The term contemporary hit radio was coined in the early 1980s by Radio & Records magazine to designate Top 40 stations which continued to play hits from all musical genres as pop music splintered into adult contemporary, urban contemporary, contemporary Christian and other formats.

The term "top 40" is also used to refer to the actual list of hit songs, and, by extension, to refer to pop music in general. The term has also been modified to describe top 50; top 30; top 20; top 10; hot 100 (each with its number of songs) and hot hits radio formats, but carrying more or less the same meaning and having the same creative point of origin with Todd Storz as further refined by Gordon McLendon as well as Bill Drake. The format became especially popular in the mid-sixties as radio stations constrained disc jockeys to numbered play lists in the wake of the payola scandal.

Neotraditional country (also known as new traditional country, hardcore country, or hard country) is a country music style and subgenre that developed in the 1980s and emphasizes the traditional country instrumental background (i.e. fiddle and pedal steel guitar) and traditional country vocals found in subgenres popularized in the 1940s-60s. Neo-traditional country draws inspiration from styles such as honky-tonk, Western swing, and the Bakersfield sound and performers such as Hank Williams, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Tammy Wynette, Kitty Wells, Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, and Merle Haggard. as well as often dressing in the fashions of the country music scene of the 1940s-1960s.

The neotraditional country movement was ignited by artists George Strait, Ricky Skaggs, and John Anderson in the early 1980s as a reaction to the pop-country and Urban Cowboy scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s,and became popular in the mainstream country scene by the mid-1980s into the mid-1990s with artists such as Randy Travis, Clint Black, Dwight Yoakam, Alan Jackson, Highway 101, Patty Loveless, Kenny Chesney, The Judds, Brooks & Dunn, Mark Chesnutt, Toby Keith, and Keith Whitley. By the mid-to-late 1990s, the neotraditional country movement was overtaken in popularity by "stadium-sized" pop-country performers like Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Billy Ray Cyrus, LeAnn Rimes, and Tim McGraw, who integrated aspects of the neotraditional style with the musical and theatrical components of arena rock, adult contemporary music and 70s-90s pop music.

"Like a Prayer" is a song by American singer Madonna from her 1989 fourth studio album of the same name. It was released as the album's lead single on March 3, 1989, by Sire Records. Written and produced by both Madonna and Patrick Leonard, the song heralded an artistic and personal approach to songwriting for Madonna, who believed that she needed to cater more to her adult audience.

"Like a Prayer" is a pop rock, dance-pop, and gospel song that also incorporates elements of funk. It features background vocals from a choir and also a rock guitar. The lyrics contain liturgical words, but they have been interpreted by some people to have dual meanings of sexual innuendo and religion. "Like a Prayer" was acclaimed by music critics upon release and was a global commercial success, becoming Madonna's seventh No. 1 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, topping the Hot 100 for three consecutive weeks and also topping the charts in many other countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom. Rolling Stone listed "Like a Prayer" among "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

Soft rock (also known as light rock or mellow rock) is a form of rock music that originated in the late 1960s in the United States and the United Kingdom which smoothed over the edges of singer-songwriter and pop rock, relying on simple, melodic songs with big, lush productions. Soft rock was prevalent on the radio throughout the 1970s and eventually metamorphosed into a form of the synthesized music of adult contemporary in the 1980s.