Loverboy

Loverboy was a band my cousin introduced me to way back in 1980, along with Def Leppard and a few other bands. Their first two albums contain some very good music, but once they got popular, they went downhill FAST. Okay, okay, some of the songs on Keep it Up were pretty good, and the song "Notorious" from their fifth album was utterly fantastic (it might be worth buying their greatest hits CD, just for that one); but the rest, especially Loving Every Minute of It...ugh, words fail me.

Lead vocalist Mike Reno also does a fine duet on Sammy Hagar's Three Lock Box album.

"Loverboy"

  1. "The Kid is Hot Tonite" (4:24)
  2. "Turn Me Loose" (5:35)
  3. "Always on My Mind" (3:31)
  4. "Lady of the 80's" (5:05)
  5. "Little Girl" (3:55)
  6. "Prissy Prissy" (4:21)
  7. "Teenage Overdose" (4:14)
  8. "D.O.A." (3:38)
  9. "It Don't Matter" (4:56)

This really isn't a very good album -- except for the first two songs (which are timeless classics), the rest of the music SUCKS big time! Okay, "Little Girl" and "Lady of the 80's" are okay...but try listening to "Prissy Prissy" and you'll see what I mean!

"Get Lucky"

  1. "Working for the Weekend" (3:42)
  2. "When It's Over" (5:09)
  3. "Jump" (3:41)
  4. "Gangs in the Street" (4:35)
  5. "Emotional" (4:54)
  6. "Lucky Ones" (3:52)
  7. "It's Your Life" (4:05)
  8. "Watch Out" (4:02)
  9. "Take Me to the Top" (6:14)

This CD used to be out of print, and for years I lamented passing up a badly scratched copy...then one day, while shopping for some CDs that I wasn't able to find, on a hunch I decided to check for this one...and it was there!! This is by far their best album, and a favorite of mine since it was like the fourth or fifth crappy vinyl record I ever bought. "Working for the Weekend" of course is a classic, "Lucky Ones" is quite a rocker, "It's Your Life" has a wonderful rhythm to it (my cousin wrote a parody of that song called "She's My Wife" which was rather nasty and graphic: "She's my wife, and I'll beat her if I like..." hey we were only 12 then...) "Emotional", sung by guiarist Paul Dean, has an interesting Rolling Stones feel to it.

"Keep it Up"

  1. "Hot Girls in Love" (4:00)
  2. "Strike Zone" (6:03)
  3. "It's Never Easy" (4:06)
  4. "Chance of a Lifetime" (3:59)
  5. "Queen of the Broken Hearts" (3:50)
  6. "Prime of Your Life" (4:55)
  7. "Passion Pit" (4:27)
  8. "One-Sided Love Affair" (3:41)
  9. "Meltdown" (3:34)

The band seemed to run out of talent halfway through recording this album. There's some great rockers here, especially "Queen of the Broken Hearts", "Prime of Your Life", and "Hot Girls in Love", as well as a pretty ballad "It's Never Easy". But "Strike Zone" is a shameless ripoff of "When It's Over" from the previous CD; catchy, but derivative nonetheless. And the lyrics of "Passion Pit" are ridiculous: "In the passion pit...where everybody gets a hit..." UGH!! I guess you could safely say I lost all interest in the band past this point (although they DID have a very nice song, "Notorious", many years later...I'll have to fire up Napster and look for it...)

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