No, I’m not saving these songs up for a full album review.  I don’t think I can face listening to this album as many times as I have to in a short period of time to complete one of those reviews.

That being said, ‘Always’ is one of the few songs that actually held up well under the TLFR treatment.  I suppose that it helps a lot that underneath all the power-ballad, hard-rock trappings, the song is fundamentally a beautiful, tender ballad.  Therefore, giving it a straight-up ballad treatment doesn’t do anything that’s alien to the song’s basic nature.

I do like power ballads though, so the original is always going to be my favorite.    That version just has so much more power and emotion to it–and that’s what speaks to me.  But this version puts the focus onto the lyrics of the song, which are a heartbreakingly beautiful piece of love poetry.  Jon’s voice isn’t as strong here as it was when he recorded the original, but for the most part, the more intimate and restrained arrangement actually works well with the changes in his voice.

Actually, my main irk with this song comes in with some of the instrumentation.  One of the backing instruments is some sort of reedy-sounding device–I can’t tell if it’s a keyboard, an organ, or even an accordion (I’m not that good).  To my ear, it just doesn’t blend well with Jon’s voice or the rest of the instruments, and winds up being rather grating.

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My parents had this album.  And it was an actual album–on vinyl.  Consequently, this is one of the songs that I remember quite clearly from my childhood.

It’s a testament to the songwriting on display in this song that I remember all the words, even though I really don’t listen to it all that often.  All I have to hear is the first few notes of the intro and it all comes right back and I can sing along with the rest of the song.

The song sounds simple to me, but I think that’s more because it doesn’t contain the in-your-face electric guitars and the other elements of the hair metal that I usually listen to.  It’s actually a very beautiful song.   The imagery in the lyrics jumps out at me in this one.    By the time I get to the end of the song, I have a complete mental image, fleshed out beautifully in relatively few words.

I guess part of the appeal of this song will always be its association with my childhood.  As soon as I hear it, this one instantly takes me back.  Not only can I picture the images laid out in the lyrics, but I can also see the living room of the house where I grew up.

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I discovered Springsteen relatively late.  Sure, his work was always part of the background of my world–which, when you consider that I’ve spent a fair part of my life in New Jersey, shouldn’t be a surprise.

The lyrics to this song were always the most outstanding part of it for me.  They could very easily have gone too far, and crossed the line into silliness.    But it’s Bruce’s delivery of the vocals that makes them come to life.   His performance made me feel this story, not just hear it.

The images that this song can conjure up are just amazing.  In relatively few words, this song can create astonishingly complete pictures.  Once that gets paired up with the emotion that he puts into the vocal performance, the whole thing just feels like it comes to life.

The harmonica in the intro does a good job of setting up the tone of the song, but from there on out, the rest of the music just provides a background to underscore the rest of the lyrics.  For me at least, the rest of the music almost fades out–but it does underscore all of the emotion that gets expressed int the lyrics.

That one thing–the way that he made this particular song live and breathe for me–was what made me realize that he really does deserve all of the praise that he gets.  The man really is just that good.

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The Bon Jovi box set is a fascinating treat if you’re a fan.   This was the first insight that I had into just what did and didn’t make it into the band’s albums.  (And it helped secure my personal feeling that this is a band that simply does not get enough credit for just how much skill they have when it comes to creating rock and roll music.)

Because this song, like many others, is lead single material if it had been created by almost any other band.  This is a song with a hook, and a memorable one at that.  Personally, this is a song that I’ve had stuck in my head many, many times since I got the box set.

It might be  a little bit weak in terms of the lyrics.  These aren’t exactly Bon Jovi at their best–Jon can get a good bit deeper than this, and he certainly does better when he’s got a story to tell.  But they still fit well with the rest of the music, and are relatively memorable, which for a pop-rock song, is all that you really need.

But Bon Jovi aimed higher than this song, and much as I might enjoy this particular piece of music, even I can admit that they’ve turned out superior songs on their albums.  This is infectious, memorable, and enjoyable–but it lacks the deeper dimensions that I can find when I listen to songs like ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’.

That being said, that doesn’t stop me from enjoying this song.  I’ve liked this one from the day that I got the box set.  I think it’s that pounding guitar riff.  It’s not complicated, but it satisfies my need for something that just plain rocks.

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Want to hear just how much awesome you can wring out of one riff?  Take a look at this song.

This whole song is driven by one deceptively simple riff–it underlies the whole thing, and powers it all.   And then once you’ve listened to the whole thing it gets into your head and won’t go away.

The lyrics start out as a fairly typical Meat Loaf/Steinman collaboration, but the way that they sync up with the riff and the drums underneath gives it a little bit more rhythmic punch than usual.   Once you get past the second verse,the call and response really ups the force with which the song hits.  This one bit of song builds up tension better than some thriller movies that I’ve seen–I can feel the song, and all of the emotional responses that it creates just twisting tighter and tighter.

And the lyrics could be utterly depressing, except they’re not.  Meat Loaf completely transforms the lyrics with sheer force of awesomeness.

This album was one of the first real rock and roll albums that I bought for myself, and it bridged the gap between pop music and harder rock for me.  This particular song, out of the entire album, was one of the ones that spoke most to me–and now that I’ve grown more and my taste has changed, I know why.   It creates awesomeness out of the same dark seeds that heavy metal does.  And I discovered metal starting with the hair bands and slowly working my way darker and deeper–but this song was part of what sent me looking down that path.

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I know that Van Halen is one of the few truly great hard rock bands out there, and their music is fine, as far as I’m concerned.  However, for some reason, I never really was able to get into their music the way I did with other bands.   They just never really became a favorite.

Panama is one of the few Van Halen songs that I know at all, and it isn’t really a song that I know very well.    But with a riff like this, it’s not an easy song to ignore.   This song is memorable, for all of the right reasons.  It’s got a great hook, and you can recognize this song in a heartbeat.

And they managed to pace the song perfectly.  This is a song that just feels like it’s flying along during the chorus, and the verses and the bridge all build up the chorus.

Songs like this are the reason that Van Halen became as huge as they have.  I can listen to songs like this, and I can understand it.  It’s just that for some reason, it doesn’t really connect with me.  As great and high energy as this song is, I just feel flat after listening to it.

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Hair metal has ranked as my favorite genre of music for years now.  This is what speaks to me.  I will not apologize for that.

And when it comes to getting the sound absolutely perfect, it’s hard to beat Def Leppard.   This song is a prime example of just how well this band can do at turning out big songs made to be played in an arena (or in your car while driving down the highway with the windows open in the summer).

The chorus especially is just made for dancing along–I dare you to resist it.  I know I can’t–I think I’ve danced around the room about five times in the course of trying to write this post.  (Unfortunately, dancing, while fun, really doesn’t contribute to getting the post finished.)

The lyrics aren’t complicated, but they work with the music, and the rhythm of the lyrics gives the whole song a great groove.  That natural fit is part of what makes the song so great for dancing, I think.

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I’m surprised that this one didn’t turn up earlier, seeing as how this is basically a four-minute ode to everything that I like about rock music.  I’ve said that before–I like arena rock.  I like it because it’s big and it’s loud, and it hits hard.   I think you’ve probably figured that out by now.

Musically speaking, this song is all about the drums.  Even when the guitar kicks in, the entire sound of the song is driven by that drumbeat.  The vocals follow right along with that pounding rhythm and match right up to it.  That gives the whole percussive feeling of the entire song even more force.  This is a song that you feel as much as you hear.

The lyrics don’t really make sense, but then again, they don’t have to.  They fit, and it all feels right.  This is a song that doesn’t have to be complicated to be excellent.  It is exactly what it says in the title–it’s loud and proud.

The guitar solo is a little bit short and uncomplicated–but it fits with the rest of the song.  They could have done a little bit more with it, in my opinion.  The rest of the song is so dominated by the drums that a little bit of balance in the solo would have been a good thing.

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Awhile ago, I had listed this song as one of my top 10 ‘bad day’ songs.  There’s something about it that I find singularly uplifting–especially the bridge leading into that last chorus.

I didn’t really develop an interest in Bruce until relatively recently.  It wasn’t like I didn’t know the basics of his stuff–living this close to New Jersey, that was kind of unavoidable.  But I didn’t have any of his music until one day when I found a Greatest Hits collection on sale.

This was one of the first Springsteen songs that I really liked.  It was certainly the first one to start racking up a serious play count, and it very quickly climbed into the list of the songs that I listen to most.

The lyrics themselves could be interpreted in a rather depressing way, but the music lifts it up into something amazing.   I think a lot of the amazing feeling of this song comes from the use of the piano in combination with the guitars.  That, and the way the chorus just soars.

A lot of what drew me into rock and roll is the emotional power of the songs.  And that’s something that this song delivers.

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My first real rock album (well, technically it was a cassette) that I ever owned was a copy of Meat Loaf’s Greatest Hits, which of course included ‘Bat Out of Hell’.  Sure, it would eventually be Bon Jovi that would truly make me into a hard rock fan, but Meat Loaf was where the journey started in a lot of ways.

I think it’s come up before in other discussions of Meat Loaf, but when I was a kid, I listened to a lot of showtunes–I had a ton of Broadway soundtracks.  Songs like this one bridged the gap between what I had been listening to and rock and roll.

I suppose that’s not much of a surprise, when you consider that this song, along with a couple of others from the album, were originally written by Jim Steinman for a musical.

But it was really Meat Loaf, and especially this song, that introduced me to just what an electric guitar could really do.  Listening to this was an eye-opening experience, and I wore out that first cassette tape in fairly short order.

And you know, I can go back and listen to it even now, and still be blown away by the sheer epicness of this song.  Between Meat Loaf’s delivery and Steinman’s writing, it’s an amazing track.   The song is quite long, but not a second of it is wasted.  It’s big in pretty much every conceivable sense, and I still love it.

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