05032014 - Tommy Shaw "Girls With Guns"

Has it really been 30 years? Damn, I remember hearing the title track on this album when it first came out. And it's still one of the greatest upbeat pop songs from any AOR artist I can think of from that era. So what about the rest of the album? Because I really only heard that one song back in the day. Well, I am enjoying this - how could I not? After all, this is classic melodic rock with strong rockers, strong ballads and extreme catchiness all over the place. Most of the songs on the first half of the album could have been singles, and almost all of them are instantly hummable. Halfway through the album we are treated to the epic piece "Kiss Me Hello", which with its 7 1/2 minutes demands a bit more of an attention span, but if you can handle it there's more light entertainment directly afterwards. Not all songs are classics, and the second half of the record has the least wonderful songs, but hey - when you have a tune as great as "Girls With Guns" the rest of the songs could have been recordings of nails scraping across a blackboard backed by a tone deaf plumber playing an untuned violin, and as a whole it would still have been pretty great!