a long-ago Foreigner review<\/a> but never actually reviewed, even though I once-upon-a-time owned both of their initial albums (1980\u2019s Loverboy<\/i> and 1981\u2019s Get Lucky<\/i>).<\/p>\nLoverboy, it must be said, is not rocket science. Paul Dean\u2019s heavy but focused guitar attack, Mike Reno\u2019s soaring vocals, Doug Johnson\u2019s assertive synthesizers, and the versatile rhythm section of Matt Frenette (drums) and the late Scott Smith (bass) gave the band enough juice to jump on all of the trends of the day: New Wave backbeats, stadium-sized rockers, synth-heavy brooding, and syrupy power ballads. They did so with aplomb while delivering song after song that sounds ripped from the spiral-bound notebook of a high school sophomore, with exactly that level of emotional intelligence and real-world insight in the lyrics.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the thing, though: in their own way, these guys were (and are\u2014they\u2019re still active with all four surviving members in place) pretty brilliant at what they do. They are perpetually a hundred percent committed to these powerfully hooky songs and play them with genuine passion and panache.<\/p>\n
Consider Loverboy\u2019s first and possibly still best single \u201cTurn Me Loose\u201d from their self-titled 1980 debut. Does its lyric feel as predictable as a knock-knock joke? Well sure. Do the synth tones sound like they were dialed up in a middle school band room? You betcha. Are the melodic hooks repeated so many times that you may wake up your bedmate humming them in your sleep weeks later? Absolutely. But said hooks are so potent as to be simply undeniable, and the mashup of Dean\u2019s aggressive licks, Johnson\u2019s looming synths, Smith\u2019s pulsing bassline, and a backbeat that approaches disco in its relentlessness, provides a fitting backdrop for Reno\u2019s urgent, impassioned vocals. <\/p>\n
Classics<\/i> wastes no time following that opener with Get Lucky<\/i>\u2019s big single \u201cWorking For The Weekend,\u201d a naturally anthemic tune that\u2019s all about propulsion as the guitar and keys and rhythm section just keep pushing, pushing, pushing until the entire song feels like it\u2019s galloping into the sky. Another high point soon arrives with the genuinely ridiculous \u201cThe Kid Is Hot Tonite,\u201d a song whose adolescent embrace of every rock-show clich\u00e9 in the known world is only amplified by Reno\u2019s vocal melodramatics (bet you didn\u2019t know \u201csmiles\u201d is a four-syllable word). But the song\u2019s melodic hooks\u2014one after another after another\u2014could land an orca. Love it or hate it, this is the epitome of arena rock right here.<\/p>\n
In between, \u201cTake Me To The Top\u201d is equally silly but showcases the impressive vocal range and power Reno possessed in his prime. Other highlights, such as they are, include the thrumming, punchy \u201cLucky Ones,\u201d the giddy, insistent \u201cHot Girls In Love,\u201d and \u201cWhen It\u2019s Over,\u201d Get Lucky<\/i>\u2019s melancholy rewrite of \u201cTurn Me Loose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not everything here rises to the modest standard of the above notables. \u201cThis Could Be The Night\u201d\u2014co-written with fellow scenester Jonathan Cain (The Babys \/ Journey)\u2014is a power ballad that puts the maple in syrup with its grating, sickly-sweet synth tones. (I realize there are people who love this shit, but wow.) Meanwhile \u201cJump,\u201d co-written with frequent Bryan Adams collaborator Jim Vallance, was released three years before the same-named Van Halen tune but has nothing in common other than the title; it\u2019s pure AOR cheese that has only gotten smellier over the decades. Much of the rest of this collection similarly disappears in a haze of dry ice fog and never-ending clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n
In the end, \u201cguilty pleasure\u201d feels like a phrase that was made for Loverboy, right down to those occasionally nerve-jangling synth tones. Yes, they\u2019re cheesy as hell, but they\u2019re cheesy in a specific, identifiable way, instantly recognizable as early \u201980s arena rock synths; in that sense they carry a certain inescapable retro charm. (I\u2019m laughing as I type these words, having raged so many times at these very same dollar-store-motherboard synth tones. But they are what they are, and they work better in this context than just about anywhere else I\u2019ve heard.)<\/p>\n
Maybe the highest compliment I can pay Loverboy is this: they knew who they were, they knew what they wanted, and they worked hard to achieve what they achieved. It might not qualify as great art, but sometimes we all need a break from that, too, and when you do, Loverboy will be there, wearing pants of leather and ready to rawk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8735],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-46429","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-loverboy","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46429"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}