10 albums riding the nostalgia train
Any band that’s been around the block a couple of times will want to reminisce every now and again. Although there is always new ground to be covered whenever someone goes into the studio, it’s always easy to fall back on those early records to remember where you come from. Whereas most bands just use nostalgia as a bit of a crutch, albums by acts like Def Leppard proved that those feelings are pretty much all you need to make an album.
Throughout every one of these projects, the artists made special priority to go over their greatest hits checklist of everything that one of their albums is supposed to be. Of course, you could get that from a best-of collection, but even though there are original tunes all across the record, it’s hard not to picture the band as older artists trying to fit into their older rock spurs now and again.
Then again, it’s even crazier when it manages to work. Despite each of these records clearly playing to the listener’s emotions, it’s not like they didn’t have the tunes to back them up. Across every record, there are at least a handful of tunes that make people realise the power that the group had in their prime and how they’re still able to deliver every time they plug in their instruments.
None of them are looking to reinvent the wheel when it comes to their sound, but it’s not like they were really trying to, either. They were just looking to give their audience a good time, and even if they aren’t aces from back to front, it’s hard not to listen to some of the riffs and not feel a little fuzzy inside thinking about the classics.
10 albums riding off nostalgia:
10. Psycho Circus – Kiss
There’s a common evolution when it comes to certain Kiss fans. Either they’re the diehards who will worship the ground that Gene Simmons walked on, or there are the ones who made it past the age of 12 and started to see how gimmicky some of their shows were. Although that’s not to discount the fantastic music the group has made over the years, Simmons and Paul Stanley knew enough that fans listened with their eyes when making the album Psycho Circus.
When Kiss decided to take the makeup off in the early 1980s, though, it seemed like it would be a huge mistake. Their image was tailor-made for MTV, and once they took it off, it felt like they lost one of their core strengths as a live act. Although the glorified hair-metal version of the band squeaked by throughout the age of glam, the nostalgia bug got them when they invited Ace Frehley and Peter Criss back into the group when making Psycho Circus.
Although tunes like the title track and ‘We Are One’ veer on the cheesy side a few times, there was no better way to get people more excited than reminding them of the rock and roll circus that made glam rock history in the early 1970s. Even if the album did come out as being completely manufactured later, it’s hard for any fairweather Kiss fan to listen to a tune like ‘You Wanted the Best’ and not feel just a little bit of a chill.
9. Stop Drop and Roll – Foxboro Hottubs
Green Day never considered themselves snobs for any type of rock and roll music. They were proud to wear their influences on their sleeves, and even if it didn’t work, they were glad to take an experiment and fail at it rather than try to coax by on easy mode. So after making a career-defining masterpiece, they found themselves where every rockstar was in the 2000s: back in the garage.
While Stop Drop and Roll is far from a strictly punk rock affair, its callbacks to the early days of 1960s garage rock are still a great time. Since Green Day actually took the time to acknowledge this side project rather than The Network, tunes like the title track and ‘Mother Mary’ are worthy of being among Green Day’s greatest hits from around this time, especially when Billie Joe Armstrong gets to embrace his inner glam-rock frontman.
In fact, them describing their second instalment in their trilogy, Dos, as a Foxboro Hottubs album is both a praise of their side project and a slam at their original material all at the same time. Because when you start having more fun playing the kind of hits from a completely different band, you know that somethin has gone seriously off the rails behind the scenes.
8. Young Americans – David Bowie
David Bowie was never meant to stay in just one artistic skin for the rest of his life. He was the definition of a musical chameleon, and you never knew when one of his bold new sounds would be the basis of the next era of his career or become incredibly boring the minute you got to the end of the vinyl groove. Bowie always radiated rock and roll during that time, but his healthy love of soul resulted in an album lost to time entirely.
Bowie had become infatuated with soul music for years, but hearing him actually try his hand at performing it on Young Americans is surreal, especially after his work on Diamond Dogs. This was the sound of Aladdin Sane trying on new clothes, and with the help of Luther Vandross and John Lennon, they fit him quite well when working through tracks like ‘Fame’ and ‘Fascination’.
Although fans got a healthy dose of nostalgia hearing Bowie tackle different pieces of soulful ephemera, it’s not like he was looking to keep up the charade for long. By then, he was halfway towards working on Station to Station, but for a brief moment in time, he managed to capture a specific danceable vibe that both paid tribute to the classics and also found some new magic in there that no one had discovered yet.
7. Death Magnetic – Metallica
By the end of the 2000s, all Metallica fans needed was an album that sounded remotely like the thrash legends they once knew. The entire late 1990s had seen them try their hand at being alternative, and as soon as St Anger dropped, they were treated to the kind of patchwork job that sounded like one long musical therapy session. It felt like the band most knew was truly dead and gone, but Death Magnetic was the phoenix from the ashes that made everyone love them again.
From a songwriting perspective, this record sidesteps everything during their mainstream years and picks up right where And Justice for All left off. Standing at only ten tracks, every one of them is meant to hit you in the face with one riff marathon after the next, going so far as having an instrumental track akin to ‘Orion’ and an extension on ‘The Unforgiven’ series by bringing the trilogy to its unofficial close.
It’s hard to call the album the perfect comeback with production that sounds this lacklustre, but it wouldn’t be Metallica without some iffy recording techniques, right? So it’s better to just be happy with what we got, and after years of fiddling around with their sound, this sounded like Metallica was back and had written a long-awaited apology to the fans for being gone for so long.
6. Saints of Los Angeles – Mötley Crüe
No hair metal really had any business being in the limelight after 1993. The entire floor had dropped out from under the scene the minute that Nirvana’s Nevermind, and even with a handful of decent tunes, Mötley Crüe was the last band that seemed equipped to deal with the alternative revolution. They were the banner band for the 1980s if there ever was one, but through all of their turmoil, they actually managed to bring the tunes for one last outing on Saints of Los Angeles.
Then again, it’s not exactly a high bar to clear something as questionable as Generation Swine. The group had already been in for a reset ever since Tommy Lee left the fold, but when he rejoined in the 2000s, this was the kind of love letter to all the things that made them interesting, to begin with: sex, drugs, and most importantly, themselves.
Because if you’re remotely familiar with the band’s story, this feels like the audio accompaniment to their movie The Dirt, only with far less vanity in the mix. Despite being the laughing stock of Los Angeles once grunge rolled around, Mötley Crüe actually managed to look like an elder statesman the minute they put the record out. In a world where most hair metal acts didn’t get the chance to close the door on their legacy, the rock icons did at least pull off looking cool one last time.
5. Yeah – Def Leppard
Def Leppard has had one of the more interesting career trajectories of many hard rock acts of their time. There were still a lot of pop sensibilities in their music, but not many were able to balance the hooks with guitar chops as well as they did on records like Pyromania and Hysteria. That was only one facet of their taste, though, and Yeah may as well have been a way for them to get back in touch with what made them pick up a guitar.
Since their last album, X, was their most deliberate attempt to pop in their career, having them kick back and lay down a bunch of cover tunes was a way for them to remind themselves of those anthems they built themselves on. Although most covers albums are meant as a cheap cash-grab for bands, they aren’t half bad at trying their hand at some of their favourites, with their versions of The Kinks’ ‘Waterloo Sunset’ and Blondie’s ‘Hanging On The Telephone’ going over surprisingly well.
Compared to most acts that just try to make a nostalgic record in an attempt to get fans to like them again, this is the textbook way of breathing life into older tracks. It’s not exactly experimental by any stretch, but it’s still a worthy inclusion amongst the rock-adjacent side of their catalogue.
4. Crown Royal – Run-DMC
By the time the 2000s dawned, old-school hip-hop had begun to look more and more like a cheap joke. While Run-DMC was responsible for inventing the new school of rapping, they were also incredibly important in shaping what nu-metal would be without even knowing it, being among the first to include guitars behind their beats. So when acts like Limp Bizkit were the biggest things in the world, Crown Royal should have been a slam dunk, but it came off a little too retro at some points.
Again, that’s not to say that there aren’t some great moments here. Tunes like ‘Queens Day’ with Nas is one of the best later tunes that the band ever released, but when looking at the other guests on the track list, it’s hard to think of them having the true cream of the crop, especially when Kid Rock shows up to deliver the same amount of energy as the average Monster energy drink.
The only fatal flaw with the album has got to be how fractured it is, with DMC hardly having any presence on the record and Run spending almost the entire runtime just hyping himself up as one of the rulers of hip-hop who took the 1980s by storm. Reminding people of how badass you are is the number-one reason to make an album like this, but most people showcase their badass credentials by example rather than just saying it.
3. The Endless River – Pink Floyd
For most of the 1990s, any chance of getting anything new by Pink Floyd felt inconceivable. David Gilmour and Roger Waters falling out was the stuff of legend, and despite patching things up enough to perform together at Live 8, it’s not like they were ready to kiss and make up for another album or anything. There was no Pink Floyd on the horizon, though, but The Endless River was a far more lukewarm affair than most comeback albums were supposed to be.
It’s not like it didn’t have merit going in, though. Since Richard Wright had recently passed away, this was an opportunity to give him the album equivalent of Wish You Were Here, featuring passages with him recorded during sessions for The Division Bell. That album was already a tough sell for fans, though, and another record that was nothing but odds and ends would probably not sway many people’s opinions.
When looking at how they worked around it, Gilmour does at least do a few interesting tweaks to the production, like bringing in different jazz textures that sound ripped straight out of some orchestral movie score. That being said, this feels less like the fireworks show that most people would expect and more like a well-written chapter at the end of a novel. It’s not meant to be thrilling, but it does its job all the same.
2. Rock ‘n’ Roll – John Lennon
John Lennon never made any apologies about being a fan of rock and roll music. Regardless of the millions of failed experiments he made with Yoko Ono, he was still a fan of the music that excited him all the way back when he was a teenager. So when it came time to fulfil his contractual obligations for his lift of ‘Come Together’, a covers album of his favourite tunes pretty much recorded itself.
Although Rock ‘n’ Roll is a lot more rough around the edges than anything that had Phil Spector’s name attached to it, the ramshackle energy feels just right paired with Lennon’s voice. He was already looking to break free from his emotional turmoil of being separated from Yoko, but you’d hardly ever hear he was in pain tearing his way through ‘Peggy Sue’ or ‘Stand By Me’.
Despite Paul McCartney’s covers album being a lot better produced, Rock ‘n’ Roll is the only covers album a former Beatle ever made that seems to fit in nicely with the rest of his catalogue. In fact, it’s even easier to look at this album and see a picture from the times than Some Time in New York City was.
1. The Dance – Fleetwood Mac
When any band works on a reunion, they already have a few odds stacked against them. Aside from having to pay at the top of your ability every single time you’re onstage, there’s also that feeling of whether you’ll be as relevant as the new kids in town looking to change how people listen to music. Especially in the post-ironic 1990s, Fleetwood Mac shouldn’t have had a prayer, but when they’re put on stage, the music spoke for itself.
Throughout every song on The Dance, the classic lineup isn’t just playing a run-through of their greatest hits. Even if someone had heard the song ‘Landslide’ a thousand times, the way Stevie Nicks sings it in this version is enough to bring real tears to people’s eyes, knowing that she has grown into the woman that she talked about growing older to be.
And while some of the tunes are played straight, original tunes like ‘Bleed to Love Her’ and their performance with a marching band on ‘Tusk’ are both shocking experiments that have no business working as well as they do. Everything about the live album was about reminding people about what great musicians Fleetwood Mac once were, but in just one show, they also unlocked a bit of magic no one realised was still there.
