Bad For Good: The Very Best of Scorpions

Product description CD Amazon.com Sure they're big, dumb, and obvious, but weren't the Ramones? Isn't Britney? (Especially Britney!) It is, after all, no mean feat to forge a bona fide rock stereotype, let alone become a self-perpetuating parody of said cliché in the bargain. Fashions may come and go, but the Scorpions still "Rock You Like a Hurricane"--and now at sporting events the nation over, no less. The material here leans heavily on the Hanover band's '80s prime, a period when they burnished their melodic pop-metal tack--if not their traditional spandex couture--all the way to the top of the charts, capping a decade of journeyman hard-rocking. There isn't much here from their formative '70s period (with the exception of Animal Magnetism's metal-shuffle "The Zoo"), but proto-power ballads like "No One Like You" and "Still Loving You," and hook-filled, power chord pomp like "Big City Nights" helped pave the way for the rise of the glam metal of Poison and G'N'R in the late '80s--and hey, thanks for that. That hard-pop sense also comes to fore on an '89 cover of the Who's "I Can't Explain" and a pair of undeniably consistent new recordings, the title track and "Cause I Love You." Scorpions über alles! --Jerry McCulley