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Richard Marx- In many ways Richard Marx kept the AOR flag flying in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as by then the genre as a major commercial draw had long since died. I like listening to Richard Marx's songs individually, but over an album they lack diversity and he often demonstrates everything bad about the AOR/soft rock genre with his reliance of ballads and overly commercial material. One of the main reasons I always followed his discography, is that one of his main writing collaborations was with Fee Waybill the frontman of the Tubes and an old idol of mine, he often sings backing vocals on some Richard Marx stuff as well. The Steve Lukather link is no surprise, because if you wanted real guitar quality on your songs, he along with Neil Schon were the best two around.
Tom Petty- Now Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers were great on their first five albums, it was after that though that they started to embrace the heartland rock and southern rock which I really dislike, so I more or less stopped listening to them and Tom Petty's solo stuff around that time. Now their first albums were great,
Long After Dark probably not as strong as the other four though. The big issue that I have with the first four albums, is that whilst being very good are not as great as they are often made out to be. I think if all the best parts of the first four albums were condensed into just two albums, they would be amongst two of the best albums of all time. Probably my favourite song by them and one of the most overlooked as well.
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers ~ Luna - YouTube
Meat Loaf- Now you just had to have Meatloaf didn't ya?
I know that you were reviewing another album but I just have to mention a
Bat out of Hell it must be one of the most overblown and silliest albums ever conceived with its operatic overtones and it was certainly Jim Steinman's baby, but thanks to Meat Loaf's bombastic singing the whole thing is pulled and we have an album that is probably essential to any CD collection. I put it on now and again and think how silly it is, but I keep on putting it on......I also saw that you did a feature previously on Jim Steinman's solo album (his only I think) whilst that album sounds like a direct sequel to
Bat Out of Hell it suffers from Jim Steinman's lack of range and it could have been so much better had Meat Loaf been on it, because the songs were there. I thought
Dead Ringer the true follow-up to
Bat as a disappointment though.
I see that you have a section of Bruce Dickenson comin up, looking forward to that.