Bad For Good: The Very Best of Scorpions
Sure they're big, dumb, and obvious, but weren't theRamones?  Isn'tBritney? (EspeciallyBritney!) 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 ofAnimal 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 ofPoisonandG'N'Rin the late '80s--and hey, thanks for that. That hard-pop sense also comes to fore on an '89 cover of theWho'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