Disco de Mötley Crüe: “Greatest Hits”

Does The Darkness have you curious about 80s metal? You think that you will get a feel for what we went through in the 80s by buying this Greatest Hits? This CD is far short of the best of Motley Crue. It doesn't even include Too Young To Fall In Love and it messes up the original Shout At The Devil. Obviously a record exec put these songs together.

Think about the big bands today. Normally they come out with a raw album (sorry, I'm old) that grabs the attention of real music lovers. An underground buzz starts, then the record company gets a hold of the band and sees dollar signs. MTV steals the their souls from the artists and kills everything about the music. The art dies and the band becomes a "sell-out". For most people, their favorite album of a band is the first one they heard. This isn't always the case but it is very true of 80s metal. The hits you hear on 80s stations are rearly the songs that got us off.

If you REALLY want to know what it was like for 80s metal fans and why it blew up, you can't just download individual hits. The list below is a good start of CDs to pick up for beginners. These may not be the most selling albums of these bands, but they are the raw stuff that made us love them:

Motley Crue: Shout At The Devil (Pure, hard, real. No other MC album comes close)

So if you really want to get into this stuff, don't buy Greatest Hits CDs or you will never understand what it was like to be a metal fan in the 80s. (One exception is Poison, their hits are good but their fillers on every album suck. Greatest Hits would be best for them.) Good Luck.

For the majority of the eighties, the world belonged to Motley Crue, and they did their best to rock it. They also did their best to all but do themselves in. Behind all the drug OD's, celebrity girlfriends, car crashes and head-on's with the law, Motley Crue never lost sight of one thing. They were a rock and roll party band and the party, as long as they were holding it, was always going to be loud and crazy.

"Motley Crue: Greatest Hits" rises above the tabloid fodder and argues eloquently -- then again, maybe eloquent is not a Motley Crue term -- that the Crue were every bit as important as Guns and Roses during the rock wars of the eighties. These were songs written for strip joints and home grown debauchery. "Girls Girls Girls" slides by on a greasy guitar hook that just screams pole dancing, and the notorious video backed that image up to the hilt. "Shout At The Devil" shoves a middle finger at any authority figure to stand in its way, and who else but Motley Crue could turn a near death experience into a song as incredible as "Kickstart My Heart?"

Crue tunes stole shamelessly and brilliantly. "Kickstart" could have popped out from a Sweet or Slade book of riffs, and there are times when Vince Neil shows a debt to Robin Zander of Cheap Trick (especially on "Same Old Situation" and the underrated "Glitter"). They spotted a party tune ("Smoking In The Boys Room") from years away and turned it into their breakout hit. And like all perpetual adolescents, they maintained a boy's club mentality that fostered songs like "Wild Side" and "Don't Go Away."

They also had their hearts on the leather jacketed sleeve side as well. "Home Sweet Home" was the Crue's "Senior Prom" moment. This song and video became so insanely popular that MTV had to forcibly shelve it from the request shows. Like Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," it breathed life into the oft spun notion that every bad boy has his soft spot.

If you can look at the other dimensions of Motley Crue, you'll see that the band was more than just tabloid gossip with big hair, even if the band did little to stop that reputation. This group of highschool misfits (listen to how plain biologically young they sound in "Too Fast For Love"!) forged a bond that all the fights and girl problems couldn't mar. "Greatest Hits" proves there is a lot to be said about chemistry, and I'm not talking about the kind you find in a hypo. BTW: If you want a good read about rock as an asylum built for four, grab "The Dirt," the Motley Crue story.

Motley Crue is my favorite band. I'm a 15 year old girl and all my friends say "Isn't this band, like, old?" but Motley Crue rox. My brother got me really into this band, that's where it happened. The songs on this CD are all awesome. The guys are absolutley amazing. Vince Neil has a great rock voice and Tommy Lee totally kicks butt on the drums. Nikki and Mick also rock. The best songs are "Bitter Pill" "Kickstart My Heart" "Girls, Girls, Girls" and "Smokin' In The Boys Room". All of these songs belong on the greatest hits CD, although I wish "Too Young To Fall In Love" were on here. It definitley deserves to be. This CD is awesome. The Motley reunion concert was here recently and I am so sorry I missed it. Buy this CD!!!!

Don't get me wrong. I love Motley Crue, but this CD didn't do them justice. I bought it because I was longing to hear "Home Sweet Home", but I should have saved my money and just downloaded the song instead. This CD is not horrible, just not great. In hind sight,I just should have purchased the "Theatre of Pain" album instead.

I've listened to this album at least three times before reviewing. Artistic freedom with 17 tracks leaping from the disc, takes every fan to the jumping off point to better things. The musicians excel displaying on every cue from start to finish, the tunes that shot straight to the top all under one roof. For example "GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS, typical Motley Crue creativity and you know what...you're completely hooked.

Some stand outs are ~ "HOME SWEET, HOME", this alternative ballad gives the listener a real treat, with tight harmony as lyrical genius prevails. The hit single of "PRIMAL SCREAM", takes the group into a frenzy direction, it's so heavy and it rocks to the ceiling. But the highlight by far is "DR. FEELGOOD", the gleam from heavy metal shines through with a contagious beat and tempo, meeting raw energy head on, this is what we've all wanted from the git go!

Total Time: 73:54 on 17 Tracks ~ Hip-O Records 440-067-635-2 ~ (3/04/2003)