SIDE 1.
FIRE AND ICE
LOOKIN' FOR A STRANGER
I WANT OUT
WE LOVE FOR LOVE
HELL IS FOR CHILDREN
SIDE 2.
HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT
PROMISES IN THE DARK
HEARTBREAKER
LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD
LIPSTICK LIES
Pat Benetar is one of those names you know and you're not sure why. Her songs are those that you hear and never remember who they are by. Hopefully, now that I've heard this album I will be able to adhere the songs to the name for good.
It's a live album and a sort of a makeshift best-of. Well....I should say live up to 'Love is a Battlefield'. It's as if they felt they had all of her hits recorded live except that one, and if they were going to have it be seen as a hits album (despite it not being titled as such), then they should probably slap on the last two songs. Either that or they recorded a very short concert and weren't left with enough material to fill up a live album.
Either way, this album contains her best known songs, mostly performed live. From the sounds of it, her concerts were a great time at the peak of her popularity. In the early eighties, she was a female rock legend and her strong-willed lyrics undoubtedly an inspiration for women listeners.
When I put on the record, I looked at the track listing and thought 'That's a lot of songs before love is a battlefield' (my favourite Benetar track). However, as I listened through, I thought 'this is her?' pretty much every time a song came on. It's a good collection of tracks, even though they are littered with their share of 80's cheese. Plus, there's just something about Love is a Battlefield that makes me smile. Perhaps it's the ingrained image of my wife and her sister always getting so into it whenever the song comes on.
She was part of an era when female artists were out to prove that they could rock as hard as men. Along with Heart, Chrissie Hynde, Joan Jett , Annie Lennox etc, they were the musical feminist movement of my generation.
ReplyDelete