This was the album that took Erasure out of the clubs and on to the radio. "A Little Respect" and "Chains Of Love" became huge hits, and deservedly so, as both songs are still good over 20 years later. While this is without question Erasure's most popular and best selling album, it isn't necessarily their best. There are too many songs (namely "Ship Of Fools," "Hallowed Ground," "Sixty-Five Thousand," and "Heart Of Stone") that just aren't that good. Then there are songs such as "Witch In the Ditch" and "Phantom Bride" that are good, but only if you don't listen to them too often. There are some good tunes on here besides the two huge singles, though. "Yahoo!" is a gospel-turned-pop song that is ridiculously catchy. "Imagination" and "Weight Of the World" are fun little tunes, great music, good lyrics, good songs. The two bonus tracks at the end of the album are two of the best songs on the album. The first, "When I Needed You," is absolutely beautiful and extremely sad at the same time. The lyrics are just great, I think: "I could be most anything/ There is so much to see/ I'd live a different story/ If you were next to me. Where (where)/ Where were you/ When I needed you most/ When I needed a friend?" Great stuff. The other bonus song, which ends the album, is a cover of the Ike and Tina Turner song "River Deep, Mountain High." It has a great build up at the beginning, a nice intro that, while having a quick tempo musically, takes its time building up to the main song. It kind of drags a bit at the end, getting a little repetitive, but other than that it's a good tune. Overall, a very decent album, but it was not the classic some music sites make it out to be. The follow up, Wild!, was much better in my opinion, but didn't do nearly as well critically or commercially.
5 Best Songs:
5. "Imagination"
4. "Chains Of Love"
3. "A Little Respect"
2. "Yahoo!"
1. "When I Needed You"
"A Little Respect"
"Yahoo!"
"When I Needed You"
123. Hooray For Boobies by Bloodhound Gang (2000)
And then we have one of the more ridiculous albums around. Bloodhound Gang don't pretend (or even try, really) to be great musicians or lyricists. Instead, it's really all about the cringe factor. "How much can we get away with before someone say that's enough?" On this album, the answer seems to be "As much as you want." It starts off with "I Hope You Die" which is all about, well, wanting some asshole to get what's coming to him, basically. Personally, I love the line about the prison cellmate and his fun little quirk: "While he masturbates to photos of livestock/ He does the 'Silence Of the Lambs' dance to Christian rock." Ha. "Three Point One Four" is about a quest to find, well, "I need to find a/ New vagina/ Any kinda/ New vagina/ It's hard to rhyme a/ Word like vagina/ Kevin Cline kinda/ North Carolina." Childish? Absolutely. But also funny. "Mope" uses clips of "Rock Me Amadeus" and "Relax" to basically... well.. not sure what that song's about. At one point Pac Man is trying to get them to smoke crack or something, I dunno, weird. ""Yummy Down On This" is all about blow jobs and wanting one. "The Ballad Of Chasey Lain" is all about a stalker wanting to meet the porn star and... yeah... wanting to eat her ass. "The Bad Touch" is the one song on this album that most people have heard. ("You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals/ So lets do it like they do on the Discovery channel.") "Hell Yeah" is funny as shit, wondering what kind of stuff he would do if he were God. "If I were God, thou shalt not wear tube socks with flip flops" and "If I were God thou shalt not worship false Billy Idols, and thou shalt add the book of Flava Falv to the Bible" are lovely. "Right Turn Clyde" seems like a sequel to "I Hope You Die," or maybe more of a prequel, I guess, and has one of the best choruses ever: "All in all you're just a 'nother dick with no balls" sung to the tune of "Another Brick In the Wall." One of the funnier parts of the album is "The Ten Best Things About New Jersey." It's not a song, it's ten seconds of silence. Took me a couple times to figure out what the joke was (I was stupid back then) but once I got it it was funny. The rest of the album is just basically filler, 4 or 5 more songs and a couple little clips. Definitely more of a 14 year old boy album than anything else, it's still fun to have on as background music at a party or something, if for nothing else than at least to see reactions to certain songs.
5 Best Songs:
5. "The Ballad Of Chasey Lain"
4. "I Hope You Die"
3. "The Bad Touch"
2. "Three Point One Four"
1. "Hell Yeah"
"The Bad Touch"
"Three Point One Four"
"Hell Yeah"
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