Search - Motley Crue :: Motley Crue - Greatest Hits

(Most of) The Crue's Greatest

Grant McKee | Chicago, IL United States | 10/03/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I don't think that there's ever been a greatest hits album in the history of the music business that didn't rile up a couple of fans. Motley Crue, who was known as much for their off stage antics as their on stage ones, weighs in with this 17-track package, and it's mostly the good stuff in here. There are some songs on here that most other reviewers thought didn't belong, but I happen to like "Without You" and "Afraid." There are a few clunkers on here, like "Glitter" and the re-tooled and nu-metal-ed "Shout at the Devil," but overall it's pretty hard to pick up a greatest hits package and just HATE it. Even the two new tracks ("Bitter Pill" and "Enslaved") are great additions to the Crue legacy.



Just a few more nitpicking moments: First off, the track order is somewhat flawed. The songs are grouped together pretty well, though "Glitter" falls in between two of the Crue's heaviest cuts - "Wild Side" and "Dr. Feelgood." Also, the transition from "Without You" to "Smokin' in the Boys Room" is jarring to say the least. Finally, someone should have spent a little more time on the artwork. It looks rushed.



If you're really into Motley Crue, I'd recommend picking this one up for the two unreleased songs. If you're not REALLY into Motley Crue, this does a good job of collecting the essential songs (except "Live Wire"). Personally, I've got a bunch of Motley Crue records, but I throw this one on when I'm feeling lazy.



Greatest hits? Mostly. Worth the admission price? Definitely."

Welcome to 80s metal

Eat Em and Smile | Austin, TX | 05/26/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Does The Darkness have you curious about 80s metal? You think that you will get a feel for what we went through in the 80s by buying this Greatest Hits? This CD is far short of the best of Motley Crue. It doesn't even include Too Young To Fall In Love and it messes up the original Shout At The Devil. Obviously a record exec put these songs together.Think about the big bands today. Normally they come out with a raw album (sorry, I'm old) that grabs the attention of real music lovers. An underground buzz starts, then the record company gets a hold of the band and sees dollar signs. MTV steals the their souls from the artists and kills everything about the music. The art dies and the band becomes a "sell-out". For most people, their favorite album of a band is the first one they heard. This isn't always the case but it is very true of 80s metal. The hits you hear on 80s stations are rearly the songs that got us off. If you REALLY want to know what it was like for 80s metal fans and why it blew up, you can't just download individual hits. The list below is a good start of CDs to pick up for beginners. These may not be the most selling albums of these bands, but they are the raw stuff that made us love them:Motley Crue: Shout At The Devil (Pure, hard, real. No other MC album comes close)
Ratt: Out of the Cellar (Again, blew us away when it came out)
Van Halan: 1984 (Has some hits but the fillers are amazing)
Twisted Sister: Stay Hungry (Once you listen to this a couple of times, "We're not Going to Take it" & "I Wanna Rock" will be your least favorites. Check out "The Price")
Def Leppard: Pyromania (Every teenager owned this in 1983.Blows Hysteria away)
Metallica: Master of Puppets (They have a lot of good music but this is the one that got the world's attention)
Queensryche: Operation Mindcrime (The most underrated metal CD of the decade. Even Rolling Stone raved about this one.)
Bon Jovi: Slippery When Wet (Bon Jovi may seem like cheese, but this was the sent metal into mainstream)
GNR: Appetite for Destruction (If you don't know about this one you must be from another planet)
Iron Maiden: Number of the Beast (These guys never sold out)
Judas Priest: Screaming for Vengence (European metal at its finest)So if you really want to get into this stuff, don't buy Greatest Hits CDs or you will never understand what it was like to be a metal fan in the 80s. (One exception is Poison, their hits are good but their fillers on every album suck. Greatest Hits would be best for them.) Good Luck."

More than just a bad boy reputation

Tim Brough | Springfield, PA United States | 11/18/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"For the majority of the eighties, the world belonged to Motley Crue, and they did their best to rock it. They also did their best to all but do themselves in. Behind all the drug OD's, celebrity girlfriends, car crashes and head-on's with the law, Motley Crue never lost sight of one thing. They were a rock and roll party band and the party, as long as they were holding it, was always going to be loud and crazy.



"Motley Crue: Greatest Hits" rises above the tabloid fodder and argues eloquently -- then again, maybe eloquent is not a Motley Crue term -- that the Crue were every bit as important as Guns and Roses during the rock wars of the eighties. These were songs written for strip joints and home grown debauchery. "Girls Girls Girls" slides by on a greasy guitar hook that just screams pole dancing, and the notorious video backed that image up to the hilt. "Shout At The Devil" shoves a middle finger at any authority figure to stand in its way, and who else but Motley Crue could turn a near death experience into a song as incredible as "Kickstart My Heart?"



Crue tunes stole shamelessly and brilliantly. "Kickstart" could have popped out from a Sweet or Slade book of riffs, and there are times when Vince Neil shows a debt to Robin Zander of Cheap Trick (especially on "Same Old Situation" and the underrated "Glitter"). They spotted a party tune ("Smoking In The Boys Room") from years away and turned it into their breakout hit. And like all perpetual adolescents, they maintained a boy's club mentality that fostered songs like "Wild Side" and "Don't Go Away."



They also had their hearts on the leather jacketed sleeve side as well. "Home Sweet Home" was the Crue's "Senior Prom" moment. This song and video became so insanely popular that MTV had to forcibly shelve it from the request shows. Like Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," it breathed life into the oft spun notion that every bad boy has his soft spot.



If you can look at the other dimensions of Motley Crue, you'll see that the band was more than just tabloid gossip with big hair, even if the band did little to stop that reputation. This group of highschool misfits (listen to how plain biologically young they sound in "Too Fast For Love"!) forged a bond that all the fights and girl problems couldn't mar. "Greatest Hits" proves there is a lot to be said about chemistry, and I'm not talking about the kind you find in a hypo. BTW: If you want a good read about rock as an asylum built for four, grab "The Dirt," the Motley Crue story."